BEFORE
AFTERAbout two months, we had some pretty severe storms that brought heavy rain and high winds. We lost a few trees due to the high winds. All that heavy rain caused our living room to flood. We know it flooded occasionally when we moved in. And luck never had us home to watch how the water came in during a rain. We weren't ever home. Well during those recent storms we were home. It rained buckets outside. It looked and sounded like a hurricane outside! In a matters of seconds, lots of water was rushing into our living room off the back patio. It was about 9 o'clock which is just passed Noah's bedtime. Noah doesn't sleep well during storms so he was still awake watching excitedly as his mommy and daddy tried to stop the water from coming in. We had every bath and kitchen towel down to stop the water. We even called in reinforcements from my mom. She brought us two trash bags full of towels! We had about three inches of standing water on our back patio once the rain stopped. We knew we had a major problem and it had to be fixed. My mom took Noah home with her around 11 p.m. to stay the night while Cody and I tried to get the carpet dried and the water out. We were up until 2 a.m. I managed to save the carpet after two days of shampooing. Thank goodness because our carpet is barely a year old!
So how to do fix the flooding so this NEVER happens again? A bulldozer. In the BEFORE pictures, you can see there is a hill off the back patio. That hill blocks any water on the patio from running off to the pond. Our strategy was to take out that hill and create a valley in its place. Over time water will run off making our pond fuller. It's crazy the difference 7 hours on a bulldozer can do to your land! I couldn't watch the trees being taken out, but they had to go. I'd rather lose a few trees than live in a house that floods. Now we have our very own private beach! In the spring we'll have to bring in top soil and seed it to get any grass to come back, but for now it's a nice to walk barefoot without worrying about sticker burs! My mom thinks she's so funny...She bought us a sign that says "BEACH --->". We hung it in a tree outside. It's funny because it's true. Pray for grass next spring!
