Save the Pool Table!
Here’s a few thoughts on some experiences my friend had with basements and water infiltration.
When he moved into a new house, the biggest issue was how to get the pool table transported. It was his baby. He loves that pool table.
The pool table made the trip A-O-K with about 8 of us guys carrying it. It was a moving party we still talk about.
Anyway…
He moved to a new town and bought a home in the foothills in an established neighborhood.
The house was generally in good shape. We wanted to do a few things to make it more to our taste but there weren’t any emergent problems.
One of the projects was renovating the basement, containing several bedrooms and a room with a pool table. That pool table was sweet.
Being a basement the floor was slab.
He had an inexpensive short plush carpet, with pad installed wall to wall in the bedrooms and family room.
A couple of years later, he experienced, what was reported to be, the wettest spring on record for the town.
One particular storm system rained almost non- stop for four or five days.
Outside the bedroom window well there was about three inches of water above the bottom of the window and the bedroom floor was flooded. The water source for the bedroom flood was easy to figure out, but there were no windows or foundation cracks to let water into the other room, so he was puzzled.
The bedroom was completely flooded so he pulled up and rolled up the carpet and dried it out in a couple days. Foam pad, that is saturated, can’t be moved so it was a loss. dealt with the water mess with wet/ dry shop vacuums and fans. The carpet was laid back and dried out fine, but here too the pad was a loss.
With the bedroom carpet, he had the edges bound and put it back without the pad, like a wall to wall throw rug.
Fortunately the pool table was okay, and we’ve played many a game of pool on it since then.