SOPPING UP THE BASEMENT!

Two nights ago when we went down to watch TV Paul kept sniffing and saying that it smelled like pee. I couldn't smell anything. He was sniffing all the pillows and the couch (just like a dog!) trying to see if maybe our precious Pearl had had an accident anywhere. Nada! So, last night we were going to watch ER. I was getting my pj's on and Paul went down. When I got downstairs it was dark and Paul said, "Don't turn on the light." There he was with his blacklight (sound familiar, Chris?) looking for the source of the smell. I walked into the room and there was a damp spot on the rug. On further search we discovered that half of the rug was damp. So I immediately looked in the storage room because that was where we were "leaking" the first time we had a damp rug in the basement. Nada! So I looked in the shop and it wasn't wet. Paul was worried it might be a broken pipe under the house. On further searching we found that the water softener was leaking. He has it sitting in a box lined with left over pond plastic and the box was completely full of water. So for the next hour and a half we used the shop vac to suck up the water. We carried pail after pail of water upstairs, because we don't have a drain in the basement. The fans were brought in, to dry the carpet under the rug, the rug was put outside on the patio, and needless to say, we didn't get to watch ER.