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Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 27 2017, 08:12 PM

Holy waterworks, Batman!! This stupid Harvey can GTFO, as far as I'm concerned!!! Friday and yesterday weren't too bad, some rain, some wind, but last night, after Harvey had collapsed into a TD, the rains started falling. We got about 12" in a 2.5-3 hour period last night. The yards filled, as they normally do, but it just kept coming. Finally, the water reached the weep holes in the first course of brick around the house, and started coming in around 1130 last night. We frantically moved stuff out of our office, which was formerly a formal livingroom, which in true 1970's fashion, is sunken. So there was the opportunity for the thing to fill to at least 6", or so. That's not so bad, except the UPS is on the bottom shelf of my 'server rack' that's in the office, and that makes the base at about 5" above the floor. Yikes!

So I shut everything down and unplugged the UPS and wrestled that beast out of the office to a safer place. We got a total of about 1/4-3/8" of water in 5 of our rooms, and then things slowed down some. After the water receded some, the water in the bedrooms actually drained. We still had some cleanup to do in the office, and have finally dried the floor from that.

We'll still need to remove the carpet from the dining room, and will, no doubt, have to replace some drywall, but so far, we've been lucky. The storms are far from over, though, so we're watching and worrying. But H0ly FSCK, we've never seen this much rain!! Our rain gauge is showing 12.3" of rain over the last 24 hours, and other rain gauges in the area have recorded more than 27". There are still water rescues going on as people cut themselves out of their attic and call for help from their roofs. It's bad here, all over the Houston area.

The garage got about 2" in it, so there'll be some lovely cleanup going on there in the next few days. We haven't been able to get out to the shop to check on the status there, but it's about another 2-3" higher elevation, so fingers crossed things are okay there. There's still 2-3' of water between us and the shop, so we'll have to wait a while before we can go check it out. Sadly, our tallest vehicle, or GMC, is stuck out in the shop, so we're pretty much stranded here for the next couple of days.

But just wow!

Posted by: trackbird Aug 27 2017, 10:33 PM

Holy Shit Gene, sorry to hear that you guys got water in the house. I hope it doesn't get any worse. Glad to hear that you're both safe and I hope it stays that way. That's an insane amount of rain. I have no frame of reference for rain like that, but I know what 1" per hour looks like, so I can't imagine 3-5 times that.

Posted by: SuperMacGuy Aug 27 2017, 11:56 PM

I hope you can be safe! It sounds like, on Sunday nigth even, there is more rain to come! Looking at a rainfall total map, I hope everyone just packed up and got out of town. This will be bad for lots of people for a long time. Hopefully homes will be recoverable but I bet a lot will be so water logged it'll take major rebuilding.
Be safe Texas/Louisiana friends!

Posted by: mitchntx Aug 28 2017, 12:19 AM

Good to read that you and family are OK.

While a PITA, the house will fix and stuff can be replaced.

If you need something, I'm a few hours away.

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 28 2017, 12:35 AM

Thanks, all. I'm sure there are many thousands of people here now who wish they evacuated, but didn't and now, because of all the flooded freeways, simply cannot. Heck, I couldn't even drive to work tomorrow if I wanted to, because of the flooding and road closures.

Luckily, the storm is sucking up some drier air from the west. We hope that trend continues, but I still hear the big V8s of the air boats running off in the distance (in Houston, of all places). I'm hoping they're being used for rescue, and not just some guys out running up and down the bayous having fun with the water, flooding others bayou-front homes.

It really is an amazing amount of water that's been dumped on the area these last few days. We stayed, because 1. my wife's job makes ducking out of town difficult, and 2. were expecting rain, not wind, and certainly not expecting anything like we saw with Ike, which, while we weren't home, we returned to find little more than downed trees (and our lime crop for the year gone ). So we weren't expecting much. We'd lived here through TS Allison, which was stressful, but not too bad, but really, this has been historical, to say the least!

Posted by: rocky Aug 28 2017, 03:44 PM

Glad to hear ya'll are ok. The pictures I have seen of the flooding are crazy

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 28 2017, 05:09 PM

And with this thing moving offshore, ever so slowly, the more we get on the 'dry' side, the harder the rains come!!!

It's now official: 1000 year flood event. This was mentioned in the discussions of the controlled-releases of water from the Barker and Addicks reservoirs. I was kind of kidding before, even though the water we've seen is more than has ever historically been recorded, but it's been mentioned in official releases now.

We've seen another 16" of rain in the last 24 hours. We're hoping it lets up a bit soon, because we're getting into 'flooding again' water levels.

Posted by: landstuhltaylor Aug 28 2017, 06:15 PM

Sounds like perfect weather for a Toledo ProSolo

Posted by: Mojave Aug 28 2017, 08:51 PM

I'm far enough away in B/CS that there isn't serious flooding up here, but my truck is stuck at Hobby Airport, almost certainly underwater. Those who are deeper in the shit stay safe!

Posted by: Unbalanced Engineering Aug 28 2017, 11:20 PM

Fingers crossed for ya Gene and for all the FRRAXers in the effected area.

Jason

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 29 2017, 02:03 AM

Or Nationals!

Luckily, I've talked to a couple of folks going, from here, and they seen okay. That was yesterday, though. Today has been a completely different animal.

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 29 2017, 02:04 AM

Thanks, Jason.

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 29 2017, 02:06 AM

You didn't park on an upper level? We actually moved a couple of our cars to the main parking garage at Hobby for Ike. Best $50 I ever spent on parking!!

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 29 2017, 01:33 PM

Pics, or it didn't happen, right? Here's a crappy cell phone shot out the porthole, er, front door window. The water has receded a LOT:



Yesterday, at this time, I could see neither the street, nor the front porch. Luckily, the rains let up just enough last night that we only got a little more water in the house. I mopped that up this morning while I was waiting for my DSL to reset. The storm is now east of us, so we're supposedly on the 'clean' side. We're hoping to stay that way. I fear for Louisiana now, though, as they're now getting what we've had the last four days, and are already flooding. Officials there are also using the 'shelter in place' mantra, which I think is foolish. But that's just me.

The garage is a steamy mess (~2" of water there), and we made it out to the shop for our shop vac (which my wife says is why we didn't get any more water in the house), and discovered we'd had some water in there. Probably wind-blown under the walls and/or doors, since there were spots of water here and there. We'll be cleaning up out there, too. I had a pair of rotors I'd bought for our CTS-V brake upgrade on the Caprice that were still in their boxes, sitting on the floor.

Posted by: trackbird Aug 29 2017, 02:08 PM

Good lord Gene, that's a lot of water. It makes me expect to see the gondolas from Venice cruising down the street.

Posted by: Mojave Aug 29 2017, 02:22 PM

I'm parked at the Parking Spot on Airport Boulevard, which is just a parking lot at ground level.

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 29 2017, 02:55 PM

Around here? Airboats!! We have two neighbors who have them. One is powered by a Rat Motor. I think the other is a Lycoming 6.

They've been using them, though. We've heard them off in the distance since Saturday.

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 29 2017, 03:05 PM

Hopefully they're a bit above road grade. It's been a long time since I've been over there to park, but we usually try to put them in multi-floor garages around here. You never know.....

Posted by: Mojave Aug 29 2017, 04:09 PM

I'm a cheap bastard, and Parking Spot shuttles you out to their lot, so I've used them with good luck in the past, obviously not during a hurricane.

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Aug 29 2017, 11:12 PM

Heh, obviously! I'm sure they'll still happily shuttle you back out to your car. :-/

I think my wife has used them up at Intercontinental, but yes, it wasn't during hurricane season.

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Sep 3 2017, 02:30 AM

Drywall and carpet is out of the dining room. Got the fans blowing on the walls now. Pulled all the wet stuff out of the garage. Got some more storage racks so we can get stuff off the floor. good opportunity to throw away stuff that we've said we'd get rid of someday. The garage smells a LOT better. Tomorrow, the drywall comes out of the office, and hopefully we get to roll all the cars out of the shop and dry things out there.

I requested a 20 yard dumpster on Tuesday, but still haven't heard when I will be delivered. The place w get them from is less than a mile from our home. Waiting......

Posted by: CrashTestDummy Sep 5 2017, 07:48 PM

Nothing like a nice long holiday weekend to catch up on flood cleanup! I'm happy to be back at the day job so I can relax!!!

The office building is still flooded, so the WFH continues, which is very welcome. It will probably be closed for at least the rest of the week. They're still releasing water from the dams upstream and nearby the office building, so the bayou that runs behind it could be overbank for at least another week. Late last week, as the waters receded, the speed sensor status on highways and toll roads in the Houston area were gray, indicating that there were no cars on the road to calculate speed off of. Today, all the roads were red, indicating that all the people on the roads were stopped. It seems you can get on many roads, but you just can't get off. Part of the route to my office building is still under 20-30 FEET of water.

They delivered the dumpster yesterday morning. They had no 20 yard units available, so we got a 30. I figured we'd be sending a mostly-empty 20 yard unit off to the dump when done. We're still not done cleaning stuff out, and the 30-yard dumpster is about 1/2 full!!

We got the garage cleaned out. It was kind of bad that our hand was forced on some badly-needed cleaning, but we're really kind of happy with the results. After pulling everything out of the garage, we ran to H-D and picked up some wire shelving and installed it. Now, everything but jack stands and floor jacks is off the floor.

We also cleaned some of the stuff out of the shop. It got a bit of water in it, which messed up anything in cardboard boxes on the floor, and the oil-proof 'blankets' we had put under some of the cars. It's pretty much dried out, but we've left the ceiling fans going just to be sure.

I still have some baseboards and maybe some drywall out of some of the back bedrooms, but the dining room and office are cut out and drying:


Office and dining room common wall.


Dining room wall.

We're getting there. And we're DAMNED luckier than so many here.