Bloody Weather!

Peter,

Heart felt sympathy - not a nice thing to confront you. It looks from the photos that no major damage has been done at this stage unless the water was higher and has receeded. Can you sweep it all of a door and run a de-humidifier flat out for a while? Is there anything you can do to prevent re-occurance. Was it a stream bursting its banks or what?

AWEM

Oh Dear!!! Thats a *lot* of rain! hopefully there wount be to much damage.

It is nice to see other people have benches piled up like mine tho.

Dave

Peter you certainly have a way of bursting my bubble, I was admiring the local pictures you had posted elsewhere for our American friends (Kersey Watersplash particularly comes to mind) and only 8 hours later you show us pictures of your indoor swiming pool. I'd forgotten about the mud that always accompanies these events and I hope it is rural in nature and doesn't include any little "presents". You can see I have lived in town and country in my time.

Hope the cleanup goes well and there is not too much damage caused other than to your schedule. Plenty of air flow (dry today) and the de-humidifier tomorrow (wet all over the country again) and for a week or two will give you a start. Is there anyway you can divert future downpours or was it a freak storm. Down here the ground is so hard below the surface after the long dry spells that the water just runs off the top of the fields instead of soaking in, means that water seems to run where you would not expect it and the ditches are not capable of handling the flow.

Anyway, hope all goes well and the clean up is successful.

Good luck, best regards

Keith

Nooooooooooo! That's grim. My condolences.

Chris

Well so far the damage *seems* relatively limited.

The tide mark on the Dyson (DC02 - brillant workshop vac), the Ultrasonic Bath, and the Ajax bench grinder (on the floor...) are all well over the motor level etc, so these are probably FUBAR'd.

It was well over the bottom shelf of the Myford stand, and my brand new Toolmex chuck which was sitting there is complely mud coated, along with a Dremel type grinder, a couple of big rolls of workshop tissue and other small tools.

A bunch of myford spares - saddle,topslide, and a small vice were under the surface plate stand and are coated in mud but cleanable, and a toolbox near the door is full too.

Two of my material boxes next to the mill are now full of mud coating the various tool steel and mild steel blocks and bars but luckily the larger box which held quite a lot of silver steel stock and gauge plate is unscathed.

Luckily my big Abwood vices and rotary table were high enough on the pallet that they didnt get touched, and it hasn't gone over the lip on the base of the Bridgy, so the coolant sump on this is just full of the normal muck.

My only worry now is the motor on the Grinder which sits very low in the base and may well have been flooded. However as I'm going to change this back to a 3-phase item it's not such a worry.

On the plus side it's made all the swarf on the floor a lot easier to clean up.

The cause of the flooding is unfortunately not really controllable. Although we live in the highest residential area in my small town - about 150ft above River Level - we are in a slight dip near the top of

2 road gradients and the same on a lane running down from a stables/farm.

All the water runs down these 3 hills into a small culvert that passes underground for all of 6 feet and empties into a drainage ditch at the back of the house 2 doors up. It runs through the ditch in his garden, then the same in my neighbours, and into a 16" pipe running underneath the back of mine (previous owner was a builder who put this in) and back into another ditch on the other side, then underground into the local authoritys system.

It's in this system that the problem is. It can't cope with all the flow when it rains *very* heavily and as a consequence it backs up on the 2 ditches either side of my property then overflows into their gardens and then into mine.

This happened a few years ago - before the workshop was in - and no bugger would admit that the responsibility was in their area. Local council said it was a county problem, county said it was highways department, highways said it was environment agency, environment said it was anglian water, and they said it was down to the local council.

Back to the clean up.

Peter

On or around Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:27:19 +0100, Peter Neill enlightened us thusly:

bummer - however, it doesn't look as thought the water got much higher, so it could've been worse.

Must try and get it together to replace the roof on my workshop. trouble is it's gonna coast about 500 quid just for the roof sheets - at least you can get roof sheets in long lengths which mean no faffing around making joins half-way down. Simplifies the job considerably. I noticed the main beam across the middle has got rotten and is in the process of falling down. If it comes down completely, it'll bring most of the roof with it.

Peter

Not much help I suspect but is it worth dropping those "nice" items like your Toolmex chuck into a bucket of diesel/paraffin/oil/WD40? until you can get round to them. I'm no chemist but it might stop any damage while they dry out and wait for you to have time to clean them up. A few years ago I gave some water soaked items a spray of WD40 to displace the water then dropped them in a bucket of diesel, they all cleaned up Ok a few days later when I got to them. Messy job though.

Best regards

Keith

Give them a good wash with a hose and several rinses in clean water followed by a generous application of Hellermans Fospro and they should be OK.

Used it on several motors and controller electronics which were under (river) water for a week and all worked quite happily afterwards (including one that had to be started straight away).

No Peter motors come out OK normally. The rewind people have to do a load from a local quarry when it floods. They strip them, dry them in the oven and sometimes replace the bearings if they are cheap. specials get washed out and repacked.

It's a regular job for them.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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John & Peter, thanks for that info, bit of hope to recover them then which is some good news anyway.

Got most of the water cleared out and a big dehumidifier in there now, but the bad news is that more heavy rain is frecast for tonight:(

Peter

Is it worth investing in some sandbags? I bought a whole load last year to build a 'wall of silence' round my generator and they were remarkably cheap (ebay needless to say) - used up one of those bulk 1 tonne bags of sand.

AWEM

Probably a very good idea for the future, but I'm going to be a bit stuck for tonight .

Peter

I tried sandbags once. Didn't work. The river still flooded the house. ....but they did stop the wash from passing cars.

Charles

How about a kids paddling pool inflated and weighted down to divert the flow.

Can you roll the Mother -in -law in front of the door ?

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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Hi Pete

sorry to hear about the mess - but I`m sure you will be up and running soon. Good luck with the dry out process.

Paul (VMC)

Tried that, but her walking stick kept catching on the concrete and sending her off-course

Peter

Comiserations Peter,

It is my belief that the Environment Agency have a good deal of clout with water/local authorities when incidences of pollution arise. In this case it would seem that your property has been polluted by this flood with the very likely consequence that you may have inadvertantly caused, or could cause in the future, a secondary pollution incident as a result of workshop oils etc being released into a water course. I think in your position I would approach the Environment Agency expressing a concern that oil pollution is a distinct possibility and you may well find that some butts get kicked off their office chairs and out into the real world to start sorting the problem out!

Best of luck, Martin.

"No, this is not mess, it is flood-damage prevention!" :-) Had some water in the shop several years back. Thanks god, no damage.

Nick