A journal following the history, design, construction and operation of Bernard Kempinski's O Scale model railroad depicting the U. S. Military Railroad (USMRR) Aquia-Falmouth line in 1863, and other model railroad projects.
©Bernard Kempinski All text and images, except as noted, on this blog are copyrighted by the author and may not be used without permission.
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September 10, 2020

A Severe Test

Cars trapped in flooded streets four blocks from my house. The drivers needed to be rescued. 

We had another torrential rainstorm in the Washington, DC this afternoon. We got 4.8 inches in Alexandria in about an hour, but other regions got up to 6 inches. The website has a good summary of the storm. 

I am happy to report that my new drainage and sump system worked to keep our basement dry.  The two pumps in the main sump were running continuously. After about 45 minutes the incoming water started to exceed the pumping capacity of the two pumps in the first sump, but the back up sump did its job and started pumping the excess.  The back up never got near capacity, meaning we do have some excess capacity remaining in the back up sump. The water level in the back up sump never got high enough to trigger pump 4 or 5, which is the water powered back-up. 



My recovery from surgery is going quite well. I now walk without canes and can do stairs with both legs. I still have 3 weeks of planned limited activities before I can begin "normal" activities. So no layout work for now.  Overall, I was amazed at how little pain the surgery involved. I learned that my body doesn't like opioids, so I just used Tylenol to control the pain and it worked great.  My physical therapy has been good.  Modern medicine is amazing.  Still, I hope in the future they can devise a non surgical solution. 


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3 comments:

  1. Pete LeachSeptember 11, 2020

    Hi Bernie,
    Great to hear on both subjects. BTW: I've had the same issue with strong pain relievers.
    Take care and stay healthy!
    Pete

    ReplyDelete
  2. Galen GallimoreSeptember 12, 2020

    Congratulations on the dry basement! It has been a long journey - let's hope it stays dry. Out West we're finally seeing the sun again after a week of orange skies. I wish you could send us some of that liquid sunshine...

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownSeptember 16, 2020

    If you don’t have one already you might want to get a back up generator since the worst rain often also causes power outages. It’s an endless arms race to work against nature...

    ReplyDelete

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