Music to our ears

Well, the rain we have been so desperately needing finally arrived today, but only for a brief half hour or so, when it fell down quite heavily.

Apart from the pattering of the rain onto the garden terrace, and the sound of it cascading off the gutters when they were overloaded, we were also delighted to hear the sound of the pump in our cellar working away, sending lots of water up and out through the wall into an external drain. It's the first time we've heard that sound for at least three months I should think.

Last summer the reinforced slab of our cellar floor was breached during a massive cloudburst, resulting in water ingress every time we had any rain at all, however light. All the contents of the cellar had to be hurriedly brought upstairs and found a new home around the house (or ditched), which was exhausting enough, but we were also having to spend hours at a time in the cellar, sweeping water towards a portable electric pump, which then pumped it up the cellar stairs and out into the garden. My husband calculated that we were pumping up hundreds of gallons of water every time.

We sought professional help and were advised that it would no longer be possible to prevent the water coming in without completely digging out the cellar floor and starting again, which would be prohibitively expensive, so we had to accept that water would in future be coming in, and install an automatic pump to take it out! The installation of the pump was a major, noisy and of course costly job but oh, now that it's installed, the sound of it working away automatically during a rainstorm is incredibly reassuring.

I still love my cellar, though, because the boiler room is down there, so it's great for drying clothes in the winter!