Spring's arrival is no longer quite so ominous

After a little investigation yesterday morning, I was very happy to learn that all of my sump pump problems could be attributed to user error.  I was also happy to learn that we don't have a sump pump with an internally wired switch - so if either the switch or the pump go I can replace the problem part and not the whole operation.

Maybe it was the good news on the sump pump front, but somewhere I found the motivation to finally open up and apply our epoxy crack filling compound.  Of course, I'm not sure that the stuff will end up being all that effective as the instructions imply that it works more quickly and effectively when applied to warmer surfaces.  Unfortunately, our basement walls aren't all that warm at the moment.

The other good news of the day is that the forecast sun hasn't yet arrived.  With sun and higher temperatures we'd really be in the midst of a rather intense melt.  The absence of the sun should slow things down somewhat dramatically - which will hopefully allow us to avoid any Spring melt related problems.

On the other hand, because of the location of the snow during last year's thaw we've been keeping the patio and side of the house free of snow and it would be nice to have a rather dramatic melt to provide me some comfort that my work was worth it or the knowledge that no matter how clear I keep the foundation we'll have thaw leakage.

Anyway, no matter what the sun does, we should have at least a little melting today and we should be ready for it.  If I'm particularly motivated I may take this opportunity to remove some ice at the base of our driveway.

Spring is coming

After a very solid four months of Winter, Regina's forecast finally includes several days in a row with daytime temperatures above freezing.

While I'm sure that just about everyone in Regina is ready for the Spring thaw, I'm also sure that just about every in Regina would have preferred not to have the 30, or so, centimetres of snow that we got over the past few days.  

And to top off the impending thaw and new mounds of snow, our sump pump has recently started behaving erratically.  Instead of just engaging when the float is lifted by water as it should, the pump has started operating whenever it is plugged in.

If we know what's good for us we'd probably take this last day of cold temperatures and had to a local sump pump supplier and pick up a back up pump before everyone else in the city also discovers that they are facing similar problems.

We might also take this time to try to fill any problematic cracks in our basement foundation, a task we've been putting off for a number of months.

Of course, because we're both feeling a little under the weather and are moderately sedated with cold medication it's possible that neither of these advisable courses of action will be followed.