wherein the smoke shop floods
Jul. 28th, 2013 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingThis post is basically an excuse to share some pictures of today's flood in the basement of the smoke shop. :-(
What you need to know: the building I work in (which has three stores on the ground floor and an advocacy center on the second floor) was built around 1900, give or take a few years. It is old. Its plumbing is old. The previous landlord was an absentee dickwad who lived in Florida and didn't give a shit about all the things that went wrong. So there are a lot of maintenance issues that have been getting worse over the years because he wouldn't hire anyone to fix them.
One consequence of that is that when it rains a lot -- either a really torrential downpour or steady rain over several days -- the storm sewers cannot cope and stuff starts to overflow. Also the caulk on the rear alley side of the building is falling apart so water seeps in (pours in, more like) and runs down the walls to collect in the basement. Also also, there is no guard flap on the back door of the smoke shop, so water can flow in right under the door and flood our back storage/office room.
A torrential downpour hit Ithaca between 9:00 and 9:30am. The basement flooded. The back alley flooded. Our back room flooded.
Sweetheart was able to get the back room mopped up by the time I arrived at noon, but neither she nor Melodrama had had a chance to get down to the basement. The owner of the gear consignment shop had gone downstairs, however, and he called our new landlords (who bought the building maybe a year and a half ago) to report nearly a half inch of standing water in the shared open area of the basement. And wonder of wonders, they sent a maintenance guy over who promised to actually DO SOMETHING TO FIX THE PROBLEM. :-O (My coworkers didn't call because we're still thinking in terms of the old landlord, whom calling would not have done any good.)
I still spent at least two hours mopping, dumping buckets of water down the old elevator shaft, and sweeping the remaining water over the drier, higher parts of the floor to increase the evaporation rate. SO MUCH WATER. Ugh.
Also we need to move our financial paperwork, because there is apparently a leak in the ceiling of our junk room right over the bookcase where we store them. I was just starting to get the old statements dried out from the LAST flood (about two weeks ago, give or take) and now three of those boxes are soaked AGAIN. Double ugh and blecch besides. (I think the boxes are growing mold...)
Anyway, pictures!
This is the open area of the basement, looking toward the staircase shared by the smoke shop and the gear consignment shop (our eastern neighbor; the western neighbor is a yarn shop). Nobody knows exactly what that white rectangular object is. It just mysteriously appeared when the gear consignment shop took over from the previous tenant, which was an interior design shop. (Sorry the picture is so dark. My cell phone does not do well with flash photography.)
This is just to the right of the previous shot. The left door goes to the gear shop's storage room. The right door goes to the smoke shop's network of storage rooms. (We have three or four, depending. not counting the humidor, which is basically a wooden lean-to that takes a bite out of the collective open area.) As you can see, the floor is not exactly level; there are totally dry parts as well as parts under significant amounts of water.
This is looking through the door into the smoke shop's storage rooms. What you see here is the entry foyer plus a bit of the main storage room (which is where we keep the coffee and so on.)
We have now stepped through the door and turned right, facing the supply storage annex. The reddish stains on the floor are rust residue from the last time the hot water pipe sprang a leak. :-/
We are now in the supply annex and have turned left again (facing the same way as in the photo of the main storage room), looking into the junk room. That is a dead vacuum cleaner, btw. We kill at least one of those every year, just through general wear and tear. Note the reflections on the floor. That is another half inch of water.
Looking along the right edge of the junk room. In the upper left quadrant, do you see a brown box on the floor with a bunch of papers balanced on top of it and some others leaning beside? That is one of four boxes I had sitting out to dry after the last flood. It is the only one that did not get drowned again. (The unlucky boxes are now way in the back of the room. You can see two of them in the distance, though they blend with the background a bit.)
Back in the doorway of the junk room, looking to the left. Again, note the reflections; that is a good half inch of water on the floor. Also note the boxes you can see at the edge of the photo. Yes, those are more financial document storage boxes. There is a leak in the ceiling over that metal bookcase, but we have not yet been able to identify its exact location. (Don't ask about the skis. I think they were used once in a seasonal window display, but who knows why they're still around. There's a reason we call this the junk room!)
So yeah. Lots of water, lots of argh.
What you need to know: the building I work in (which has three stores on the ground floor and an advocacy center on the second floor) was built around 1900, give or take a few years. It is old. Its plumbing is old. The previous landlord was an absentee dickwad who lived in Florida and didn't give a shit about all the things that went wrong. So there are a lot of maintenance issues that have been getting worse over the years because he wouldn't hire anyone to fix them.
One consequence of that is that when it rains a lot -- either a really torrential downpour or steady rain over several days -- the storm sewers cannot cope and stuff starts to overflow. Also the caulk on the rear alley side of the building is falling apart so water seeps in (pours in, more like) and runs down the walls to collect in the basement. Also also, there is no guard flap on the back door of the smoke shop, so water can flow in right under the door and flood our back storage/office room.
A torrential downpour hit Ithaca between 9:00 and 9:30am. The basement flooded. The back alley flooded. Our back room flooded.
Sweetheart was able to get the back room mopped up by the time I arrived at noon, but neither she nor Melodrama had had a chance to get down to the basement. The owner of the gear consignment shop had gone downstairs, however, and he called our new landlords (who bought the building maybe a year and a half ago) to report nearly a half inch of standing water in the shared open area of the basement. And wonder of wonders, they sent a maintenance guy over who promised to actually DO SOMETHING TO FIX THE PROBLEM. :-O (My coworkers didn't call because we're still thinking in terms of the old landlord, whom calling would not have done any good.)
I still spent at least two hours mopping, dumping buckets of water down the old elevator shaft, and sweeping the remaining water over the drier, higher parts of the floor to increase the evaporation rate. SO MUCH WATER. Ugh.
Also we need to move our financial paperwork, because there is apparently a leak in the ceiling of our junk room right over the bookcase where we store them. I was just starting to get the old statements dried out from the LAST flood (about two weeks ago, give or take) and now three of those boxes are soaked AGAIN. Double ugh and blecch besides. (I think the boxes are growing mold...)
Anyway, pictures!
This is the open area of the basement, looking toward the staircase shared by the smoke shop and the gear consignment shop (our eastern neighbor; the western neighbor is a yarn shop). Nobody knows exactly what that white rectangular object is. It just mysteriously appeared when the gear consignment shop took over from the previous tenant, which was an interior design shop. (Sorry the picture is so dark. My cell phone does not do well with flash photography.)
This is just to the right of the previous shot. The left door goes to the gear shop's storage room. The right door goes to the smoke shop's network of storage rooms. (We have three or four, depending. not counting the humidor, which is basically a wooden lean-to that takes a bite out of the collective open area.) As you can see, the floor is not exactly level; there are totally dry parts as well as parts under significant amounts of water.
This is looking through the door into the smoke shop's storage rooms. What you see here is the entry foyer plus a bit of the main storage room (which is where we keep the coffee and so on.)
We have now stepped through the door and turned right, facing the supply storage annex. The reddish stains on the floor are rust residue from the last time the hot water pipe sprang a leak. :-/
We are now in the supply annex and have turned left again (facing the same way as in the photo of the main storage room), looking into the junk room. That is a dead vacuum cleaner, btw. We kill at least one of those every year, just through general wear and tear. Note the reflections on the floor. That is another half inch of water.
Looking along the right edge of the junk room. In the upper left quadrant, do you see a brown box on the floor with a bunch of papers balanced on top of it and some others leaning beside? That is one of four boxes I had sitting out to dry after the last flood. It is the only one that did not get drowned again. (The unlucky boxes are now way in the back of the room. You can see two of them in the distance, though they blend with the background a bit.)
Back in the doorway of the junk room, looking to the left. Again, note the reflections; that is a good half inch of water on the floor. Also note the boxes you can see at the edge of the photo. Yes, those are more financial document storage boxes. There is a leak in the ceiling over that metal bookcase, but we have not yet been able to identify its exact location. (Don't ask about the skis. I think they were used once in a seasonal window display, but who knows why they're still around. There's a reason we call this the junk room!)
So yeah. Lots of water, lots of argh.
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(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-29 09:15 am (UTC)It didn't occur to me that the storage rooms were so vast. Cool. Well, aside from the water.
Seeing as you have a co-operative landlord, it might be worth mentioning water in the lift shaft. They tend not to have drainage. If it's non-operational, it's likely that if a sump pump was installed the power to run it may have been disconnected. If there's water pooling in the shaft you could end up with the usual nastiness that comes with stagnant water.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-30 02:38 am (UTC)In addition to our storage rooms, the gear shop has a room that runs along the east side of the building from the staircase all the way to the front (south) wall. Along the western wall (and down a couple steps) is the boiler room, with the furnance and so on. The room in the back northwest corner is condemned and boarded up; I have no idea what it was ever used for. The elevator shaft sits at the rear (north) side of the building and was intended to carry deliveries from the alley to the basement. The lift part itself has not worked for decades and may or may not have ever been electrified -- like I said, it's an old building! -- but we still use the shaft and the platform to chuck down coffee deliveries rather than carry the boxes down the narrow stairs two or three (30 or 45lb) at a time.
We actually drain our air conditioner directly into the elevator shaft via a workaround of garden hoses and duct tape... or at least we have done for the past three years. This year the temporary fix seems to have worked better and the AC is gamely struggling along without overt problems. (We really need a new air conditioner, but our owner and the previous landlord could never agree whose financial responsibility that ought to be so nothing ever happened. We have hopes now, with the new landlords, but thus far no solid proposals have emerged.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-29 11:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-30 02:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-29 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-30 02:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-30 12:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-30 04:29 am (UTC)The boxes have since been moved.