So I came home from a family vacation full of sand and fun times at the water to find my basement full of water. The same basement I finished just two years ago. Not good. We were away for two weeks and unpacking the car when I went down stairs to throw some laundry in the washing machine. This is what I found…

One of the washers on the water meter coming into the house has slowly worn away with time. We are not sure exactly how long it was leaking, or spraying to be precise. This would have been a much smaller issue if we had been home. I’m in the storage room where our water meter is located on a daily basis since our extra refrigerator is there. A good tip we were given for the future is to put a metal pail under the meter so that if there is a leak you with hear the “ping as the water drips.” I will be using that tip!  We called the town water department emergency line (it was Sunday evening) and someone came within 15 minutes to fix the leak.

So I now have a lot of work ahead of me from drying the basement out all the way to bringing it back to what is used to look like. All the items down there are just things. Things are replaceable. The only items I was concerned about were our photo albums, including all my kids baby pictures. Those were determined to be safe since mold is the real issue here. I’ll explain all the steps we had to take in case this ever happens to you.