Forced cellar revamp

After a catastrophic flood into my cellar at the end of May which destroyed a fair bit of my equipment, i thought it was time to have a revamp.
As you can see from the pics the dark grey water was RAW SEWAGE forced up my cellar drains by a torrential downpour, it filled the light well up and blew the cellar window in, filling my cellar to about 2ft deep in a filthy stinking turd filled mess

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That's the blown in window and you can see the tide mark on one of my fridges.

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Lots of beer floating and submerged in sh*te plus empty bottles to reuse I couldn't face cleaning them out after that so they went to the bottle bank.

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The above pic is after i had part drained it, washer, tumble dryer, 2x Brew fridges and dehumidifier ruined as well as window, all my bottling equipment plus other items like boots.

I contacted Yorkshire Water about it who initially wanted me to claim on my house insurance, at this point the lady on the phone got both barrels as i told her "i pay you to take it away i don't want it back with bloody interest!" all said in an apoplectic tone.

Interestingly, due to the 1991 water act water companies are not responsible for sewage flooding your property!

I managed to get a significant increase on their initial offer of compensation which covered the replacement of most of the damaged goods and window.

So along with new white goods which have been raised up (shouldn't happen again as new window will hold it back if it happens again but not taking any chances) it's had the floor paint which was lifting anyway ground off, this seemed like a good idea at the time but the dust was so thick i couldn't see the grinder
The floor has been painted with a 2 pack epoxy paint (wife picked colour) which i am pleased with so far. All shelving rebuilt lights added and painted as well as a new sink unit, walls and ceiling repainted, pipes boxed in.

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Hopefully it won't happen again and i can get back to brewing now that i have built up a replacement stock of bottles

[Dennis King]

Glad you got it sorted, cellar looks good.

Its the stuff of dreams man..two fridges ! I keep my malt mill, sack of malt, mash tun, two milk churns and a boiler behind the sofa in the living room.
How do you post pictures btw when Ive tried I get..."" am I supposed to type the file path or somthing in there.

Looking good. Smart to have the fridges and stuff clear of the floor in case of another leak.

You said you'd used special floor paint, is that to tank the floor or just to be hard-wearing like you see in garages?

Do you have your walls tanked already... I have a similar looking cellar and it's not damp in the air but all the paint is bubbling through from the bricks, edges of the floor are damp, etc. I'd love to scour it and have it nice and dry for brewing but would rather DIY than do a full tanked system for £1000s.

Must be terrible, I cannot appreciate the upset this must cause with me living quite high up and hopefully excluded from these events. A few years ago when there was floods lower down in the Dearne valley near us it was around 2m up their houses...

Glad you got it sorted and hopefully it'll never happen again,, Cellar looks great BTW.

That's well bad pal, and as you said it's not just clean water that comes in it's raw sewage....



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