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lynne_melb

Help please - Tropical Storm Fay downspout, water & carpet issues

lynne_melb
15 years ago

Hi everyone

We are fine but we have been having lots of rain from Tropical storm Fay. We are Melbourne FL on the east central coast. If you heard of Melbourne or southern Brevard county, then that's where we are. It's been raining for 4 days. We are fine but there's some ground water seepage into the edges of 3 carpeted rooms. It's wall to wall carpeting. Its not sewage, just rain water that saturated the ground so much, that some of the water seeped into the carpet. We have fans & dehumdifier running. Also a/c set to lower temp to reduce humidity.

Now actually this is not a basement, but I think that we may get a lot of good answers from this site. We had basement, sump pump, backup sump up in previous home in Chicago. We had concrete floor so didn't have to worry about carpet issue in basement (FYI, DH is still in mourning over loss of basement storage in Florida homes.) The water table and soil structure make residential basements impractical.

If anyone has advice on cleaning the carpet I'd appreciate it. I also searched this forum and saw a thread where some recommended that downspouts empty water at least 8 feet into ones yard. I have a question on how this could be accomplished. The homes here only have 15-20 feet between them. People would trip over downspouts that long. Also, we are retired and not so able bodied. There is a lawn service with huge mowers that couldn't handle the downspouts.

This truly is a once in 50 year or longer occurence. The house is 10 years old and this has never happened before, from what I know.

Can anyone recommend anything else we should do to dry or clean carpet?

Up north, we used to have the hose like attachments to our downspouts that theoretically would unfurl when there was rain. I can't recall how they didn't work but there were some problems. Have these things improved over the years? Any specific products to recommend?

Thanks much

Lynne

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