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I don’t usually post personal information on this blog but this was just too crazy to resist.
7:15pm I was sitting on my couch with my MacBook finishing up my presentation for 360Flex Atlanta last night when suddenly the Dish went out. This is around 7:15pm. We were having some pretty bad weather last night so I wasn’t overly surprised. However, after about 10 minutes it was obvious that it wasn’t the weather (at least not directly, more to come on this).
So, I went outside in the rain to take a look at the Dish on the roof and all looked fine. Next, I opened the door to our unfinished basement to check where the wiring enters the house and splits. OH NO! What do I see but 6-8 inches of water covering the basement floor up to the 1st step!
7:45pm I call the plumber ASAP and he lets me know that they have been getting killed with calls of sump pump issues as we have been having steady rain for at least 24 hours. I live next to a retaining pond on a natural wetland preserve which means that our pump usually runs very often when it rains. OK, back to the store. The plumber tells me that 90% of the time, the pump is actually fine but the floater switch goes bad which is what tells the pump to go on when there is water in the pit. To test this he tells me that I can unplug the pump, bypass the switch and plug it back in, after turning off the main power supply to the house. He also lets me know that they won’t be able to get someone out until between 10pm and 2am.
8:00pm I kill the power to the house, reroute the sump pump power and turn the power back on. I also unplug the wires from the only other outlet in the basement before turning the power back on. Then I turn the main back on and the pump comes to life.
Next, I get a call from the plumber saying that they had a cancellation and they can send someone over right away. This was great news.
8:45pm the plumber is on site and the water is down to only a few inches.
9:15pm Once the floor dries a little more, I head down as well to try and make some sense of what is happening. At the same time, the weather radio is going off for severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado watches. I look at where the Dish separator box is mounted, trace the wires and see nothing, but I do see that the separator is a powered splitter. Following the wires back to the original outlet which was the one that I previously unplugged, I noticed that this was a GFI outlet and it was lit up which indicates that an overload occurred. The Dish wires were well above the water so it hadn’t cause the problem however we had a dehumidifier on the basement floor which had been submerged and actually caused the overload.
9:45pm The plumber has the new pump installed and it doing some final testing. The weather radio is going off again and my wife decides it is time to head down to the basement (which is a pretty regular thing around here) as there are tornado warnings in the area.
10pm My wife, 2 daughters (age 1 and 3), myself, and the plumber are now in the basement waiting out the storm. 
10:15pm All is clear as the severe part of the storm has passed.
In the end all worked out as well as could be expected as we keep all of our valuable stuff that is in the basement in large plastic tubs just in case a flood occurs.
So in summary, if the Dish hadn’t gone out, we would have attempted to go into the basement when the severe weather hit and would have then discovered the flood and would not have been able to get to a secure place for the storm.
My recommendation: Always work at home on the couch with your TV on as you never know when it may save you.
What a crazy 3 hours.
P.S. A little more irony, I had called the plumber earlier yesterday to come out for an estimate on our water heater which was acting up and had an appointment scheduled for Saturday. The plumber took as look at the water heater and didn’t seem to think we would need a new one yet. We’ll see how that works out.
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