I heard on the news the other night: we've had 10 inches of rain so far this month. That's 10 inches in half a month. They said there have only been three times in the past where we've had 10 inches in a full month, so, rainwise, we're on a roll.

Which isn't much of a surprise to those of us with old houses.

I've already whined, er, blogged about our other adventures this winter with snow and cold but once it warmed up a bit the adventures continued; this time with water.

My house was built in 1917. Now, while that's not exactly The Beginning of Time, it's long ago enough things were done a lot differently. Our foundation, for instance, is stone. Not cinder block. Not poured concrete. Stone. Well, technically, stones. Rocks.

It looks very quaint, but the problem's not the looks. The problem is the leaks. Particularly when we get, say, 10 inches of rain in 15 days. When the rain runs hard, water leaks through the walls. Well, technically, leaks doesn't quite do it justice. I've seen water spraying through the walls like a room full of three-year-old boys emptying their bladders onto the floor.

Yes, I know about things like Thoroseal--the walls are already coated--but it still gets in. And, when the ground gets really saturated, water can also bubble up through the cracks in the floor. That, I have to tell you, is a depressing thing to watch.

But maybe the best part is the drain that brings water from outside and dumps it on the floor.

I know it sounds unbelievable, hell, it is unbelievable, but there you go. On the west end of our basement is a window about three feet square. It looks out into a window well that's a couple of feet deep. Most window wells, in my experience, have gravel at the bottom so the water which inevitably gets into them can drain out.

But not this one.

This one, for some reason, has a concrete bottom. To get rid of the water, there's a drain. The drain comes in through the wall and dumps onto the basement floor. Yes, you read that right: it drains the water onto the basement floor.

Now, I'm no expert but I'm thinking this drain-the-outside-water-inside-onto-the-floor solution might be a part of my wet basement problem. I'll grant you, there is a floor drain half-a-dozen feet away but the end result is still a wide, if not deep, puddle. Right at the bottom of the stairs, of course.

I have not helped matters in this regard, either. At the end of the basement farthest from the leaky window is my shop. When we bought the house, the floor in this area had a severe grade to it, dropping about four inches in 10 feet to a floor drain. Well, that's awfully un-level for things like a table saw.

So I "fixed" it.

I lugged in, oh, twenty or thirty bags of Quickrete and filled that big void right in.

Ha! Nothing to it.

Of course, I didn't fill in the drain. I built a column of sheet metal around it so I'd still have the drain. Covering the drain would be stupid. I'm not stupid.

As it turns out, making the point in the floor where the drain is the highest part of the floor is, well, stupid, too. Maybe I am stupid. It's not a lot higher, mind you, just a little bit. Like, maybe 3/4 of an inch. What that means, though, is you have to get 3/4 of an inch of water on the floor before it drains out.

Ugh.

Most of the time, under regular weather conditions, I don't actually get water at this end of the basement so most of the time, under regular weather conditions, it's dry. But not this year. Not with all this rain. As far as I know, the basement hasn't been dry yet this year.

I can't wait for the Spring rains.

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