An inch deep

Saturday evening I took my laptop and went out in search of a good wireless signal. I couldn't find it, but I did find a roadside DVD seller and managed to kill some time. I got home around 10pm, opened my door and stepped into an inch of water!

I knew I had left the water tap open so I could fill the water tank in my apt, but in the past any overflow just stayed in the bathroom. So my first thought was that my neighbors had decided to dump a lot of water in my apt to punish me for leaving the water on. Later I realized that the bucket I'd left in the bathroom to collect the overflow had ended up blocking the drain and caused the water to leak into the apartment. As I surveyed the damage I realized I had a fully flooded bedroom with more than an inch of water, a kitchen that had mainly served as a passage for the water and a living room that had one half of it covered in an inch of water.

My initial thought was that I would have to take a cloth and soak up the water and empty it into a bucket till I soaked up all the water but I realized that my second mop, which is a squeegee, could be used to push the water. I sent all the water from my living room either into the balcony or into the stairs (and ended up cleaning them too!). The water from the bedroom and the kitchen went into the bathroom. It took me about an hour to clear all the water and the fans dried out the moisture. The one downside of this was that as the excess water evaporated, the room temperature dropped a little overnight and ended up making the room go from cold to really cold.

When I saw the flood, I was almost in tears as I feared the worst for my clothes and electronics but as silver linings go, I couldn't have asked for a better day for this to happen to me. I had just mopped the floor in the morning and has removed all critical items from the floor. So no extension cords or wires on the floor. In fact, since I was trying out a new mop (incidentally my third mop since the first two didn't work to my satisfaction) I had added a lot of detergent to the water and as a result my floor had been sticky. I was wondering if I would have to do a second round of mopping but with this water overflow, the excess soap got washed off. Of course, the fact that I live in a fully tiled apartment, on the lowest floor meant that I didn't need to worry about water damage. It really could have been much worse.