Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016 – Rain Storm, Cleaning, Broken Sump Pump

Overnight we had another one of those Midwest thunderstorms roll through Carthage. We got 1.26 inches of rain in less than two hours. It was coming down hard. This morning the aftermath on the grounds weren’t that bad. Even so, our cleanup took longer than usual because the sidewalks were all wet and the leaf blowers have to work twice as hard to dislodge the wet leaves. But we got the whole place cleaned up before the first guests arrived.

We had a minor emergency after we finished working on the grounds. Sis. Johnson discovered standing water in our basement. We have a 4 ft deep sump pit in the floor and it was completely full of water and running out onto the basement floor.  I called Sis. Jensen, the secretary at FM (Facilities Maintenance) and she sent the plumbers over right away.

I was surprised to find out that FM manages and maintains 265 houses in Nauvoo and Carthage. Some of them are stand alone houses like ours but most are duplexes, condos and apartments. These homes are for our mission’s Senior Couples, YSSM’s, Young Performing Missionaries, Single Sister Missionaries as well as the Temple Missionaries. What all of these houses have in common is a basement. And, like all basements in the Midwest, they all have sump pumps to drain accumulated rain water. Since our home has a washing machine in the basement, the sump pump also drains the wash water.

 

Our rescuers were Bro. Darrell Layton, the FM plumber and his assistant, Elder Reed Swain, one of the Seniors. It turned out our sump pump was broken/worn out. When Bro. Layton saw the oil slick on the standing water, he knew immediately the pump was broken. He anticipated this and brought a new pump with him.  The repairs were finished, the sump pit drained and they were on way in only an hour.