The flood before Irene... Ugh...

[cadillacman]

got deeper as the day went on.. was busy sandbagging, no time to even check the garage..

old davey the truck saves the neighborhood by haulling sandbags for me and my neighbors all day

uhoh more floaters lol

once the water was down some i was able to finally open the garage....

 

[cadillacman]

My experience gave me a little knowledge. Get these all off the ground asap. On paint cans, car ramps, whatever you have. Get backdoors off of everything, coin doors open, FANS ON EVERYTHING ASAP!! you want as much air blowing around inside these cabs as possible. (if you can rent of borrow some squirrel cage type fans those work best) Know any ac guys who could score you csome cheap free used furnace blowers? those work good too. Keep fans on 24/7 for at least a few days. preferrably upwards of a week. IF YOU DONT GET THEM 100% dry THEY W I L L MOLD UP!!!!

After you think the game is dry, keep going at least one more day. Plywood dries out pretty nice, the mdf cabs are the ones that take FOREVER to dry up... the gorf-r-do i had never did dry out completely and stunk to high hell. I traded it for a old piano.

Im sad to see more wet games, not your fault, you have a hell of alot fo work ahead of you but they can be saved. Keep your chin up and this krap mess will be over before you know it.

 

[Pinball Wizard]

Where were you cadillacman for all that water?

 

[djw90]

Make me want to put all of my games on pallets seeing these pictures. Sorry to see your loss

 

[nesjess]

Man, I'm so sorry to hear that, Jeff. And right before the hurricane.

Praying that you and the family and everyone else out there that will be affected by the hurricane makes it through safely with minimal damages.

 

[cadillacman]

Make me want to put all of my games on pallets seeing these pictures. Sorry to see your loss

it wasnt a loss. we were renting, i had rental insurance. I got a check for like 8k. I got to price every game from ebay bieng they cant be had new, so i got full ebay price on each one. Plus i got to keep them! Effing awesome. most came out ok the gorf-r-do was toast, the rest fared ok...

pw: lets see that was in des plaines illinois literally about a block from the river
(nobody told us it was a flood plain untill after we signed the lease, landlord was not there the day of the flood to help sandbag either....then complained the house smelled when we moved out.. UM...DUH!!!)

It would have been about 3-4 years ago.


EAST COASTERS: Keep your chin up!!! For safetys sake, if your worried about water in your basement at all, TAKE THE TIME NOW to get your games up on paint cans, car ramps, whatever you got that wont wick up water... hell even cinder blocks with a garbage bag on top to prevent moisture wicking, get em up now. THeres nothing worse than having to get them up during a flooding event and you have no time... if i would have put mine up the day before i could have gotten them higher and mabye saved them, i didnt know it was coming. You guys do. Take the time. IF you dont flood hey its more work but id rather do the extra work now then do a krapton more work later...

 

[Jeff F]

Leg levelers?

Heh, yep, they all have them... except for the games that didn't originally come with 'em.

After this little incident... I think I'm going to do something to those games to get the wood up off the floor. Unless our drain plugs, I don't think we'll have more water than this(unless something completely disastrous happens).

Believe it or not, humidity level is back down to 50%(which is what we normally let it be). We've run 4 fans and 2 dehumidifiers since vacuuming up the water last night and we'll leave it this way 'til next weekend.

The backdoors I mentioned were off the games stacked near the water heater and the plywood doors are fine, the particle board doors have suffered swelling. A couple NOS tubes had their cardboard boxes moistened but they are drying out and hopefully will make it. I also had a box with a 13" G05 get wet too. Luckily most of the other stuff I have down there is in plastic tubs so a quick whip down was all they needed.

Game-wise... Mr. Do seems like the worst with it's base swollen. Right now it's tipped back with a fan blowing under it. Nintendo row actually did fine(thank God!). Fans are blowing all around them and like I said the dehumidifiers will be going 24/7 for the next week.

The basement was NOT finished so there was no drywall damage. The carpets dried out so quickly I'm shocked. I think it's because they are those cheap carpets from Walmart so they are not tightly knit. Air(and water) seems to breath right through it. So being cheap saved me some headache it seems.

BTW, the hot water heater seems to be working fine now with the new relief valve. You bet your butt I'll be testing this valve at least yearly now!

I hope everybody else has made/is making out good!

 

[cadillacman]

man mines been seeping ever since i bought my new house.. i think its time to replace it after seeing this episode...

and sadly ironic that mr do again gets the worst flood damage. Weired. Im glad to hear you came out ok man.

 

[Jeff F]

Just do it. It was $12 at Home Depot and took all of about 10 minutes to swap out. Hell... the new one even came with Teflon tape already in place.

Wifey just filled up the bathtub and I just sat there and watched the hot water heater turn on... heat up... and turn off to make sure.

 

[saleem]

theres lots of downsides to being english and in uk,we cant get cabs in abundance like a lot of you and our prices when we do find are real high.

on the upside we dont get weather this bad,yes we have floods but mainly where the water table is high.

makes me wander when i see things like this on bbc news how many arcade cabs are dying.

 

[mhkohne]

Heh, yep, they all have them... except for the games that didn't originally come with 'em.

After this little incident... I think I'm going to do something to those games to get the wood up off the floor. Unless our drain plugs, I don't think we'll have more water than this(unless something completely disastrous happens).
<snip>

On the subject of completely disastrous: I once flooded my basement (pre-arcade cabinets, thankfully) by installing a backup sump pump! The backup's float switch got jammed by some spiders (I should have been testing it more often!) and the primary's float switch actually got jammed on the backup! So disaster can strike in the most unlikely ways...

I got a little water last night (inch or less, due to the influx of water being faster than the pumps could deal with it!) and after I get everything dried out, I think I'm going to put all my cabs up an inch or two on 2x4 bases - that way if this happens again, it'll only be disposable 2x4s that need working on.

I probably ought to just get them out of the basement and turn the garage into my arcade instead, but that gets too hot in the summer. Ah well, perhaps I'll win the lottery...

 

[Riptor]

I got hammered by the hurricane yesterday. I worked all day then came home to no power. We had pounding rain and violent wind for a good 8 hours straight. I only slept one hour last night and that was in the basement. In the morning we checked out the aftermath and I have about 15 huge trees down in the yard. Amazingly none of my 3 garages, 3 vehicles or the house had any damage. I had a small metal shed that is now about 6" high due to a huge tree that landed on it. It was amazing because all the trees that fell were so close to hitting stuff but fell inches away. Among the survivors was my boat, riding mower and garden cart. My girlfriends 2011 Jeep almost bit the dust but luckily the tree top just grazed it.
I was able to minimize water in the basement by constantly mopping but water wasnt a big issue with this storm. It dumped alot of rain for a day straight but for some reason it wasnt coming in the house. It was a very stressful night and im glad its over. Its going to take me a month to get all these trees cut up and cleared.
Still out of power at home. I just got power back on at work so I had to get on the computer and check all my messages. Im hoping the power will come back on this evening but I highly doubt it. The road I live on has a tree on the power line literally every 5 feet or less. I have never seen anything like this before.

 

[djw90]

I got hammered by the hurricane yesterday. I worked all day then came home to no power. We had pounding rain and violent wind for a good 8 hours straight. I only slept one hour last night and that was in the basement. In the morning we checked out the aftermath and I have about 15 huge trees down in the yard. Amazingly none of my 3 garages, 3 vehicles or the house had any damage. I had a small metal shed that is now about 6" high due to a huge tree that landed on it. It was amazing because all the trees that fell were so close to hitting stuff but fell inches away. Among the survivors was my boat, riding mower and garden cart. My girlfriends 2011 Jeep almost bit the dust but luckily the tree top just grazed it.
I was able to minimize water in the basement by constantly mopping but water wasnt a big issue with this storm. It dumped alot of rain for a day straight but for some reason it wasnt coming in the house. It was a very stressful night and im glad its over. Its going to take me a month to get all these trees cut up and cleared.
Still out of power at home. I just got power back on at work so I had to get on the computer and check all my messages. Im hoping the power will come back on this evening but I highly doubt it. The road I live on has a tree on the power line literally every 5 feet or less. I have never seen anything like this before.

Its good that you made it through without major damage. Very cool the trees fell the right way.

 

[Cmndr Brain]

God jeff that sucks. Everybody else too. Hope things fare well. If you need anything, I'm 10 min away. Always sucks to see these irreplaceable things lost. Whether it's a game or personal family items. Sucks boys. I've had a problem with a back door for a little while now. But the heavy wind and rains made it worse. Fortunately I notice the problem and was able to move 2 pins before anything bad happened. One of the pins got a little water, but only dripped on the bottom floor. A small fan took care of that. No damage to the playfield or any electronics. phew!

 

[mhkohne]

I got hammered by the hurricane yesterday. I worked all day then came home to no power. We had pounding rain and violent wind for a good 8 hours straight. I only slept one hour last night and that was in the basement. In the morning we checked out the aftermath and I have about 15 huge trees down in the yard. Amazingly none of my 3 garages, 3 vehicles or the house had any damage. I had a small metal shed that is now about 6" high due to a huge tree that landed on it. It was amazing because all the trees that fell were so close to hitting stuff but fell inches away. Among the survivors was my boat, riding mower and garden cart. My girlfriends 2011 Jeep almost bit the dust but luckily the tree top just grazed it.
I was able to minimize water in the basement by constantly mopping but water wasnt a big issue with this storm. It dumped alot of rain for a day straight but for some reason it wasnt coming in the house. It was a very stressful night and im glad its over. Its going to take me a month to get all these trees cut up and cleared.
Still out of power at home. I just got power back on at work so I had to get on the computer and check all my messages. Im hoping the power will come back on this evening but I highly doubt it. The road I live on has a tree on the power line literally every 5 feet or less. I have never seen anything like this before.

Good luck getting everything settled out - I wish I'd have stayed up through the storm (would have prevented some water in my basement), but having worked till Midnight the 3 prior days and not thinking that the storm could out-water my sump pumps, I headed to bed. Ahh well, not too much damage anyway. I've got a couple of leaning trees, but none came down, so no appreciable property damage for me.

 

[m_mcgovern]

I think I'm going to put all my cabs up an inch or two on 2x4 bases - that way if this happens again, it'll only be disposable 2x4s that need working on.

How about using Trex composite decking. You can get it in colors and it is waterproof.

 

[DragonMa15]

I got water in my basement from the hurricane. The games are all on mats though. I was thinking of getting something like this, http://www.homedepot.com/Lumber-Com...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053 . Then I would have alot more options for carpet or something better than the concrete floor.

 

[Malice95]

I got water in my basement from the hurricane. The games are all on mats though. I was thinking of getting something like this, http://www.homedepot.com/Lumber-Com...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053 . Then I would have alot more options for carpet or something better than the concrete floor.

I have dricore in my basement.. works great. Raises everything up about
3/4" and allows airflow underneath. I installed it when I had my first
couple games and noticed the basement floor would get slightly damp.
So I installed Dri-core, Dehumidifier and replaced the sump. I need to
buy a battery backup sump and generator soon. Oh.. and like you said, now I
have the option of installing carpet. Hopefully this winter

 

[mhkohne]

I have dricore in my basement.. works great. Raises everything up about
3/4" and allows airflow underneath. I installed it when I had my first
couple games and noticed the basement floor would get slightly damp.
So I installed Dri-core, Dehumidifier and replaced the sump. I need to
buy a battery backup sump and generator soon. Oh.. and like you said, now I
have the option of installing carpet. Hopefully this winter

I've seen that stuff at Home Depot and I'm curious - what happens if the Dri-Core gets wet? I'ts about 3/4" high, and I had around an inch of water. Does the Dri-Core dry out OK? Or do I just need to make DAMN sure that the water never gets that high again?

I'm actually NOT looking to finish the basement at this point - it's just something I'm curious about.

 

[Malice95]

I've seen that stuff at Home Depot and I'm curious - what happens if the Dri-Core gets wet? I'ts about 3/4" high, and I had around an inch of water. Does the Dri-Core dry out OK? Or do I just need to make DAMN sure that the water never gets that high again?

Well it is particle board on top. So its not really meant to protect from a
flooding basement. They use a waterproof glue but its still going to start flaking. Basically its designed to keep flooring off the concrete as to not
wick up moisture in a basements that can have moisture. You still have to solve any water problems in your basement before laying it down.

My basement stayed dry throughout the storm but only because of my
sump pump and not losing power. I see now I need to get a backup
pump and a generator just in case. I have WAY to much money in
my basement now with the arcade collection. It just makes sense.