The Nest

Thursday, May 31, 2007 1:53 PM

Help! Our basement flooded!

Pretty isn't it?  Check out the reflection of those disintegrating cardboard boxes as they soak up the two inches of water on the floor. The culprit? We had our yearly oil burner service done and the service guy broke something on the boiler causing the valve on the back of the boiler to spew hot water into our basement for 7 hours before we discovered it. And luckily we discovered it at all! We usually don't go in our basement very often so the water could have been pouring out and building up for a lot longer before we would have noticed a problem.

So what did we do? Well DH immediately got the oil company on the phone to get over here and fix the problem and I got on the phone with our homeowners insurance and filed a claim, giving them all the details of what just happened.

Our insurance company dispatched a "disaster recovery crew" -- a dramatic term for a clean-up crew and told us to begin to itemize all of the personal belongings that were damaged, with their approximate age and value. The clean-up crew arrived and assisted in throwing out all of the damaged items, ripping out the carpet areas that were damaged, cutting out the sheetrock walls that got wet, and disinfecting the place to prevent mold growth.

Tomorrow an auditor will assess the damage. After this, I'm not sure what to expect.

We have a $500.00 deductible that we really feel the oil company should pay for, and I would imagine our insurance will be going after them for the claim as it was their fault this happened in the first place, but I have no idea how this all works.

Have any of you been through this kind of thing before? What is the typical process from here?

We've definitely learned our lesson about storing things in cardboard boxes on the floor of the basement. And also are going to look into having some kind of alarm added to our security system to alert us of water down there. I'm just glad we caught it when we did -- it could have been so much worse!