Hi all,

I have been reading and lurking for several years. This last week I finally jumped into a couple of discussions so I thought I would take a moment and say hi.

I have learned quite a bit from the folks on this forum and it helped a lot this year when we had a wee bit of flooding throughout most of eastern Iowa. I live outside the 100 yr flood plain and had no flooding at my place but we had to deal with a lot of the secondary issues and I'll offer the following quick thoughts.

1 - Buy a generator - it is a good way to make sure you will not need one.
2 - Install a battery powered backup sump pump w/alarm - again pretty good way to make sure you won't need one and $400 installed beats the heck out of a $3000+ cleanup bill.
3- Big chain stores are frighteningly efficient - we had a water shortage for a bit and every big store had more bottled water on hand than we could use in less than 12 hrs (assuming you could pay for it). Same is true of generators, pumps, dehumidifiers, cleanup gear. Amazing.
4 - you can collect nearly 60 gallons of water of the roof of decent sized house in about 40 minutes during a good rain, if you work at it and have something to put it in
5 - it is much easier to collect about 9 gallons every 10 minutes from the sump pump and more dependable too.
6- not everyone can volunteer for the cleanup - some people have to keep working to keep the local economy running so the others can volunteer.
7 - Going on really really important business travel to somewhere with water while leaving the DW to deal with water restrictions is contra-indicated, especially if you complain about running out of hot water in the hotel shower.

Probably should have passed some of this on a bit earlier but things have been a bit hectic and lurking is a hard habit to break.

-Eric

You are never beaten until you admit it. - - George S. Patton

Welcome Eric, and thanks for the tips

FWIW Dehumidified water can be VERY dangerous to drink. Any water from a condenser for that matter... So be careful.

Welcome to the fire, newguy! Glad you only had secondary issues to deal with. And yes, business travel seems to beckon disasters back home.

-Blast

Welcome aboard, Eric!

Greetings and happy hunting here....

Those business trips some of you speak of aren't the only things that "cause trouble" back at home.....anything that goes wrong at home....usually does so while I'm at work and my honey is home alone with the kids......matter of fact.....we are both usually completely surprised when something happens when I am AT home! LOL

Registered for two years, and you just now speak....

*looks at Eric*

We even got space for the odd around the fire. *laughs* Belated welcome.

Ironraven,

Odd would be one way to look at it. Of course my take on things is a bit different, though I might be tempted to agree with you. I'll just say that my life has been, err.. um.. "interesting" (?) for quite some time and while I stumbled onto this group a while back (about a year or so before I registered) I was unable to invest the time and energy then to participate. Life is still "interesting" but I seem to have a better handle on it these days so I thought I would (finally) step up to the fire and see what I can contribute.

One way or another it ought to be interesting.

- Eric