Frogs and Floods

A few months ago, we had a big flood in our storage room downstairs when the floor drain got backed up. It was such a pain to clean everything up, that we wanted to be sure that we never had to deal with a flood again. Nate found these cute little frog water alarms on Woot and we bought a bunch. We put one next to every toilet, under the kitchen sink, next to the washer and downstairs in the storage room. We figured we were covered.

Fast forward to yesterday. Elise used our bathroom after church. She has a tendency to use LOTS of toilet paper. When she flushed, the toilet got plugged. No big deal. Nate figured he would just wait for the water to go down and then plunge. We went for a walk, ate dinner, made cookies, hung out with the kids, and watched a movie . . . it was a great Sunday. Then we went to get ready for bed. There was water all over our bathroom floor and it had soaked through a large area of our bedroom carpet. What we hadn’t realized, was that the toilet was seriously clogged and no water was draining through. There is a very slow leak from the tank into the toilet in that bathroom. Over the course of several hours, that very small leak turned into a very big mess. The only dry spot in sight was right underneath our cute little Woot frog. Apparently, we had unknowingly placed him on a slightly elevated 8 inch section of our bathroom floor. There he sat, high and dry on his little island. Grr!

During the next hour and twenty minutes of using our carpet cleaner to suck all the water out of the carpet, we managed to develop a sense of humor about the whole thing and see the bright side. Positive #1: We own a carpet cleaner; Positive #2: It was a toilet paper clog . . . no poop involved; Positive #3: The baseboards behind Nate’s dresser are now free from dust bunnies (since we had to move it anyway); Positive #4: No visible water damage to the basement ceiling (so far).

It will be a funny memory to look back on in our old age.