Stuff happens

I was going to spend some time today working on the next issue of Army Engineer magazine. Instead, I'm going to be doing some outside house maintenance work, as well as some minor cleanup in my downstairs office. Last evening as I was about to sit down and watch the evening news with a "cold one" in hand, I made a quick trip downstairs to my office to check my email one last time for the day and heard was I first thought was water running down one of our roof gutter drains (there was a deluge of rain falling outside). After closer inspection, I found that water was leaking into the house around the spot where the main water line entered through the foundation. Water was dripping rapidly down the enclosure around the pipe, and running along the edge of the wall, thus starting to soak the carpet nearby. Shouting for my wife to come help, I immediately pulled the carpet and its pad up along the wall to prevent it getting any wetter, and then I searched for the source of the leak. I quickly found it and fortunately the rain had ceased by that time so the amount of water coming in had dropped considerably. Also fortunate was the fact that I had some leftover quick-drying and waterproof concrete sealant available, which I used to plug the area where water had started to enter. Looking further into the situation early today during daylight, I noted that I'm going to have to re-route the roof gutter downspout that empties near the area where the main water line enters the foundation, so that future heavy rains don't cause excessive water to back up against the foundation, as it apparently had done last night. We've had numerous equally heavy rains before over the years and this was the first time we had this sort of problem, so I'm not sure why it happened now. The good thing is that we had no water damage. Plus, I have been alerted to a potential problem with the roof gutter downspout in question. Yes indeed, stuff happens.