Basement Flooding – Part 5

I felt like the Little Dutch Boy today.  Didn’t he stick his finger in a dike?  Boy does THAT sound WRONG.  But I kinda did it earlier today.

We got slammed with a very wet and windy Nor’Easter today, with a 3 foot storm surge.  Last time we got a 3 foot storm surge was 1/4/18.  I took a bunch of pics but never posted them.  Here’s how high the storm surge got back in January:

THE FOLLOWING PICS ARE FROM JANUARY 4, 2018:

        

If you look really closely in that last pic, you can see a visitor!  Here’s a closeup:

Hello Mr. Seagull!

I thought the River wouldn’t get any higher but it did.  The whole bottom of the fish ladder was under water, something I hadn’t seen before, which FREAKED ME OUT:

        

I was SO HAPPY that a year prior I’d patched all the holes in our cage with hydraulic cement.  Coupled with a gutter extender it took care of all our cage flooding.  But with the huge storm surge I noticed that our neighbor Kathy’s cage had sprung 2 leaks that looked like little boys peeing:

Our cage borders the street, but Kathy’s cage borders the River.

So TODAY I was very worried about Kathy’s cage flooding again.  I teleworked so I could keep an eye on the flooding.  And also because the town of Essex, which is halfway between here and work, was expected to be shut down due to flooding.  And driving around takes an extra 40 minutes.   Ain’t nobody got time for that!

So before work I mixed up a new batch of hydraulic cement and did my best to patch the holes in her cage, which I’d marked with Sharpie back in January:

        

I spritzed the wall with water [as per instructions of the cement] and then glopped on the cement:

        

I started working and kept checking the River.  The levels started rising around 10:30:

So I ran back downstairs and saw that my original patch had sprung a leak:

I read on the cement container that you can patch active leaks by holding a handful of cement on the leak for 5 minutes.  So I tried that, just like the little Dutch boy.  Unfortunately when I took my hand away it was a total leaking, soggy mess:

*SIGH*

The River kept rising until the fish ladder was under water again.  We even had RAPIDS:

        

I noticed that Kathy’s entire cage wall [the part bordering the River] was damp up to about 2 feet:

I’ll definitely have to work on that…

After finishing work, I went back and applied the last of my hydraulic cement to the same place, because the tidal surge both tonight at midnight & tomorrow at noon are supposed to be HIGHER & record breaking… Awesome.  Hopefully my newest attempt will help:

Our cage had also started to leak again.  ^&%$#!!!  I moved the Ikea shelf out of the way and was very thankful to realize my wall was still fine – it was the other wall that had sprung leaks and was damp about a foot high:

        

That second pic was taken in the far right corner of the cage, as seen in the first picture.

By 4:30 the River was back down to respectable levels… But I am guessing I won’t get much sleep tonight.

Luckily our basement has 2 sump pumps which keep the water from accumulating.

One awesome part of being home today was witnessing 2 separate incidents of Darwin & Birdie interacting.  He kept jumping up on shelves slightly above her and slowly reaching out a paw as if to tap her on the head.  Each time she spotted him and hissed and he backed off, only to try again a few minutes later… It made me giggle:

        

And a few minutes later he tried again:

        

At which point she walked away.  Then later this afternoon he tried again in a different spot, but unfortunately I didn’t get any pics of his arm reaching out for her head:

        

None of it fazed Birdie at all.  She spent about an hour this afternoon sleeping in the middle of the living room floor!