Water Cycle Boogie

This is a flannelboard story presented by the educational staff of the Miami County Parks District. It shows the complete water cycle featuring Drip the Drop. To the left is the CD player playing the Water Cyle Boogie.

The Banana Slug Stringband from Santa Cruz, California celebrating the watercycle with students dressed in costume.  Notice some students are Precipitation(Rainbow and raindrops headbands), some are Evaporation(Big sun headbands)and some are Condensation(gray cloud headbands). Doug, the Drop, is leading them in a rousing boogie. "The watercyle goes round and round/ The water cycle goes up and down."  Every spring the band comes to Garbry Big Woods Reserve as part of the park district's Hug the Earth Celebration.

I'll be boogying with students again in a couple weeks. Right now I am having a hard time appreciating water. We have had more rain this spring than in any year since 1932.

The Great Miami River

                                                    
The Great Miami River Floodplain

As long as the water is outside my basement, I appreciate it a lot more.

I found my basement looking like this on April 15. Since our washer was 23 years old, and there was water under it I thought the washer was leaking so Tom and I went out and bought a new one.

That was not the problem. I looked a little further. A pipe above the washer had water leaks below a joint. I wiped my thumb across the pipe below the joint. I am very strong. I pushed my thumb through the pipe and water from the rinse cycle of the new washer rinsed my hair. But I have Duct Tape.

The laundry piled up.  The pressure on the Duct Tape when the rinse water was being pumped out might have been too much to ask the plucky tape to withstand.

A plumber took a look on April 19.  He said the copper pipe was rotten and needed to be replaced.  He also looked at our two sump pumps which send water coming into the sump hole to the front ditch. One was broken. He said he would replace the pipes and sump pumps on Friday.

On Wednesday morning, April 20, I went to the basement. There was an inch of water over nearly the whole basement. The basement would have been dry if we had had the second sump pump working. Oh, well.

The single  sump pump had the water pumped out by Thursday morning. On Friday morning, the plumber replaced the pipes above the washer and the broken sump pump.

                                   

But the next morning there was still water around the washer. The seam between the floor and the wall behind the washer was leaking; the water was flowing from the back wall to the sump pumps beside the front wall.   There was a river of water at the bottom of the stairs.

The plumber has been out again. He thinks he has a solution. He is in the process of getting the necessary parts to cure the back wall problem. Until he returns or the groundwater table lowers, I will walk through water at the bottom of the basement stairs. BUT, I have only a little river to cross, not an ocean.