Flooded Cellar 2

We went up to Lehningen again today expecting the worst as it rained all night. Fortunately when we arrived there, surprisingly there was no water in the hole around the cellar. On closer inspection we saw the cellar builder had dug down to the sewage pipe which was capped waiting to be connected up to our house. He had removed the cap so the water could flow away meaning no more standing water.

He also mentioned he would bring a pump today to start pumping the water out, but there was no sign of this and we can't really complain as it is Sunday after all. However, not wanting to leave the cellar full of water another day we decided to try out our syphoning idea. It took a couple of attempts and a lot of sucking but we got the water flowing out at a decent speed through a 4cm diameter piece of hose.

In order to try and get as much sludge out as possible I spent the afternoon sweeping the sludge through the water to allow as much as possible get sucked out.

After around 4 hours the water level was down to around the width of the pipe and as soon as air got in it stopped working. However, most of the water is now out although there is still a lot of sludge to remove.

Before leaving we used a bit of narrower hosepipe to start syphoning out the rest of the water but this will take a while so we left it running and headed off home (picking up a hard earned Indian takeaway on the way)!