Well, my house survived the night last night. I woke up this morning and it hadn’t gotten any worse–in fact, the water that had been seeping in had stopped.

Last night, I tore out several sections of drywall so I could see the concrete behind it. It’s all framed with 2X4s, and behind the 2X4 footer there was a one-inch wide channel that was about two inches below the surface of the floor. That channel was full of water, and when I would use the Shop-Vac to suck it all out, more water would take its place within a couple of seconds. When I went to bed at midnight, the water was still flowing through, but I did’t care.

This morning, however, the standing water was gone from the channel, which meant it wasn’t spilling over into the carpet anymore. In fact, it looked as though it had stopped as soon as I went to bed, because the carpet wasn’t any more soaked. Traci and I spent some time today vacuuming the water out of the carpet, so now it’s merely damp (hopefully we won’t have problems with mildew now).

I think I know where the water is coming from now. My neighbor to the north of me has a huge front lawn that runs the entire length of my house. The warm weather and rain melted the snow in their yard quickly, which then saturated the ground and worked its way through my foundation.

I think, when warmer weather is here and the ground dries out, I’m going to rip out the drywall and 2X4 studs all along that wall, waterproof the concrete (including the floor), then install new studs and drywall. Sounds like a big job for me, but at least when we sell this shithole I can (honestly) tell prospective buyers that there are no problems with it.