Final update with pictures
Posted by Chris in Tampa on 9/30/2024, 8:43 pm
Carpet is very close to being dry. I'll run the dehumidifiers more tomorrow. I haven't run them at night. I'm not running dehumidifiers constantly in general, instead giving them a break and running for 1 to 2 hours at a time. My dad has washed two loads of laundry. Many more to go, but that will happen over time. We dry clothes mostly on a clothesline that hangs down in the garage, so we can't have much on it at a time. Then dry it in dryer a bit with dryer sheets, when it's really already dry.

I did get some sleep last night. Nice sleep. I was certainly tired. I'll catch up on some more tonight. Like, after I post this. I haven't done much today. Answering emails. This morning I was matching some various box covers on my street. I was missing a large one for I think the phone company box that had floated several doors down. And then found around there a larger one that had floated even further down and brought that to where it belonged where I met the new neighbors whose wood dock floated to the house next to mine. We were talking about hurricanes for a while and how lucky we were.

I've also been hunting down mosquitoes in the house.

We are saving all the old bags. We're not washing them, but just drying them. They're in a shower to finish drying completely now that the house is less humid. Can't really easily do it outside or they would blow away. We'll collect even more bags over time.

90% of the clothes, and whatever else that could collect water, we never use. I'm glad we still had them. We got rid of a lot of stuff this year we didn't need but I didn't get rid of too many clothes.

I was starting to think about a generator on day 2. When we went to Home Depot they had tons of them. Their brand I was $899. I thought we had a lot of food but I guess a lot of it wasn't very perishable. We had 96 fl oz bottles of water in old apple juice containers, filled not all the way to the top so they don't burst, that we normally have in a large freezer that you open from the top in the garage. I added a few more bottles before the storm. They were still frozen nearly three days later. Some stuff at the top was thawing, but those bottles kept everything pretty cold which I was surprised at. We had opened it a few times, and saw it was cold, so we never really considered getting a generator. And the noise they make. My neighbor got one the day before we got power back. That was a long night. Actually he had two, but one was so much quieter. Other one was more like a jet engine. And I had to close my windows due to exhaust. I never did have it in the house, but on one occasion I walked out the front door I could smell it, so the wind direction would have only had to change barely to be in a window, so I had to close some of the windows on that side of the house. My dad slept with ear plugs and I had earbuds in my ears. Eventually I moved to the couch and closed some doors to try to reduce the noise. It was still rather loud. You have to do what you have to do though, can't blame someone for using a generator to protect their house. But it made me kind of think twice about a generator. Before that another neighbor down the street had one one night going when I was walking and it was very loud all around. I wondered what that might sound like for a next door neighbor and then I found out. Only time it was quiet was when he was filling it with gas, even at night at times.

In the end, any damage we're not going to fix. It was minor enough. It did end up staining my carpet in my family room some, but that's mostly because I vacuumed it before it was completely dry. The padding under the carpet is orange and I think it stained it some. Oh well. It was stained already. The carpet is 30 to 45 years old, with 45 years old for the carpet in the living room which was also slightly stained. But I didn't vacuum there so it's hard to tell it there. It depends on the lighting as to how it looks. Last night it was noticeable, but sitting in my kitchen table looking at it while typing this earlier I didn't notice it. Might rent a machine at Home Depot to clean it, though it would only have marginal success at most and might not change it at all.

Cabinets by the pool and garage were damaged some, but other than that, everything else was good.

Because our house is so low, ever since 2004, because of the hurricanes that year, I consider it's not worth fixing stuff. If we ever move, I would sell it as is as a tear down. Why fix it, unless you have to, or remodel, at a level too low in an area prone to surge.

We are extremely lucky, because if we had not done what we had to slow the surge, we would have had an inch of water in the house. Up to two inches including the padding in the carpet, so up to two inches to the cement below it. That would have destroyed our house basically. We would have moved and sold the house as a tear down. All the cabinets in the kitchens, pantry, my computer room and three bathrooms would have been destroyed, with just that little of water. Same with interior wood doors. It would not have been worth doing all that, even with flood insurance maybe paying for a lot of it. That would take forever to complete.

The cabinet doors in picture by pool were submerged by a fraction of an inch. The cabinets warped a foot above that. That would have been every cabinet in the house. Every interior door would be like that. All the carpets would be beyond saving. It would have meant gutting a lot.

So we were extremely lucky. Some stained carpet, pool cabinet doors damaged and some garage cabinet doors damaged, but had we not done what we did, or had it been an inch higher, or even if surge was that high for longer, the house would be a total loss for us.

I should also note that people should generally never fight the surge. I knew this might flood me by a bit, possible a few inches or even a foot. I knew for my specific location it wasn't likely to be life-threatening. I was closely monitoring the storm and had options in case it turned earlier on toward me. There was a narrow window of surge values where I might actually be able to do something about it. I would say that window was around an inch. I was able to reduce it for just long enough that it started falling before more had the chance to come in and flood across the house. I would not have been able to stop it enough if it had been probably an inch higher or stayed up at that level too much longer. If I had expected the surge here that the neighborhood next to me got, I would not have stayed.

Below are some images. I never did take much. Too busy. None of the video came out. Too dark. I only took one video when I was wading through the water but you just can't make any sense of anything in it so I didn't post it. I was too busy somewhat looking for stuff in the water that I didn't want to interact with.



Before:











Some prep:





It might have been down a foot by this time. Front yard looking across street.



Water line on screen going to front door.









I climbed out a kitchen window in the back because all the doors had plastic and pavers around them. Then I waded around house to front door to unblock it and then did garage so we could let out water that was then being held back in it by the barricade.



Sidewalk to front door:



Street is out there really submerged.





These used to be nice trees. Over the years, hurricanes have taken chunks out of these trees along the walk. They have had other issues too, but hurricanes have taken a toll. Only tiny little branch, like a foot, came down in this storm .



Water line next to side garage door. A little over 9.5 inches. Garage floor is about 1.5 inches up from cement here. So it should have come up 8 inches in the garage.



Except it was more like about 2 inches on freezer if that was the line. Only around 1 inch on the other side of the garage near house door since it slants.



Water line in backyard.



On the wall. It's the dirty line above the ground around a foot just to the left of my screen enclosure.



Closer:



Cabinets in pool area:



Carpet stained was inside those doors. Just to left outside of picture was where some more was stained, but not much.



Bottom of garage cabinet nearest the garage door opening. Every cabinet in the house would be like this to some extent if the water had actually got into the house fully. Some other cabinets there don't close as well any more.



Front entrance to my neighborhood



Closeup of what I think the waterline is:


And just to the right of the front entrance to my neighborhood is hard hit Dana Shores where you can see people have piled up debris from inside their house.



My dad talking to people fixing our box:



Just after power trucks fixed my box and fixed my neighbor's box too. (the one that lent me their driveway pavers)



Laundry day is like Groundhog Day now.





And when everything was dry it was then piled here ready to be washed.





And now it's time to focus on where the next one could potentially go if it forms. This was one so devastating to so many people. I didn't know the impacts were so significant until seeing them on the news. Hopefully future storms this year aren't so devastating and catch so many people off-guard.
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In this thread:
Is Chris OK - jimw, 9/27/2024, 7:28 pm
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