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4 Anonymous Users
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
 
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Does the city have any incentive program for green roofs? Seems they'd help reduce runoff and the burden on the ancient combined sewer system.
Posted on: 2012/8/5 21:00
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Just can't stay away
 
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Brewster's point about sewers is exactly why my basement filled with a few inches of raw sewage (Morris and Warren). It happened when the sewers became overloaded during a storm that occured at the same time the fire department decided to flush a hydrant. It was extremely frustrating, costing us time, money and the loss of items that were not replaceable. And while it was perhaps a special circumstance, I don't think that flushing out a fire hydrant during a rain storm (it wasn't a huge rainstorm) should fill anyone's basement with sewage. I understand that the issue is complex, but the city can be and needs to be proactive. Here is an update that Councilman Fulop sent last week for those who are interested. I wanted to send out a brief update to you all on how the resolution to the flooding of the York and Grove Street area is progressing. I have attended several meetings with the State, the JCMUA, Jersey City Planning Division, Goldman Sachs, and Langan engineers. All of this has to do with the installation of the pumps and the control panel at the Essex Street outflow (located at the end of Essex Street on the walkway). The State and Goldman Sachs are involved because the property on which the control panel must reside will either be in the park where the Colgate clock resides or on Goldman Sachs property. Langan is the company overseeing the renovation of the park, which is currently underway. We are lucky in that they will be supervising the design and placement of the control panel for the JCMUA so that it blends into the landscape and does not create an issue with the surrounding neighborhood. Langan has submitted a proposal to the JCMUA and the JCMUA commissioners will be voting on it at their next monthly meeting to be held this Thursday (tomorrow) at 5 pm at the JCMUA building off of Route 440. If you are able to make it I strongly encourage you to go. Seeing people from the community greatly encourages the implementation and success of the project. Additionally, Malcolm Pirnie performed a computer analysis of the junction of the Montgomery and York Street sewers at St. Peters. Their result showed that, with the pumps functioning as they should once installed at the Essex Street outflow, the flow from Montgomery should not cut off flow on York Street. The JCMUA is now working on putting in additional pumps at the Mill Basin line and pump that flow directly to the East side plant. This would free up the York line at the interceptor. The existing York line to the plant can be utilized. Cost would be between $10-20 million. The JCMUA is looking to implement this project simultaneously with the Essex Street outflow pumps. This is very positive news and a strong push in the right direction. Through all of your combined efforts it looks like we will be getting this over the goal line.
Posted on: 2012/8/4 23:24
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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That IS interesting, but it looks like the goal of the sandbags was to reduce dry weather releases. Otherwise someone's going lawyer up and sue the EPA for preferring shit in their basement to shit in the river. More info about the Hoboken pump is definitely needed. They do not have separated sewers.
Posted on: 2012/8/1 6:03
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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Like @MDM, I thought EPA had cracked down on sewer overflows (and filed lawsuits via DOJ), forcing JCMUA to agree last year to begin repairing and upgrading the city's sewer system (over something like the next decade):
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2011/July/11-enrd-940.html Is that not happening?
Posted on: 2012/7/30 19:17
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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But contradictory info is just par for the course in this subject.
Scroll down a bit at the link, you will see a picture of sandbags blocking a sewer outflow pipe. http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011 ... _needs_8b_fix_to_ant.html The next the JCMUA shows up to a meeting in the Heights, I will ask for a clarification as to what is the deal with the CSO situation. I wonder if Hoboken separated the storm sewers from the sewage lines, that are served by those pumps?
Posted on: 2012/7/30 18:18
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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As far as I know, the new Hoboken pumps dump into the river. But contradictory info is just par for the course in this subject. See the quote in this story from the North Hudson Sewerage Authority Chairman Richard Wolff: "Engineers said it's possible that since the system is interconnected, as the water is pulled out of the southwest, other areas' water could flow down through there and out the river that way," said Wolff. http://www.nj.com/hobokennow/index.ss ... _show_hoboken_wet_we.html
Posted on: 2012/7/30 17:38
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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Brewster:
It is my understanding that as of a few years ago, the EPA stopped allowing the top of the flow (sewage being more dense stay at the bottom of the sewer) from being dumped untreated. So if it can't be treated or put into a surge tank, you let it back up. We are still dumping untreated water though, which JC is being threatened with fines if it is not fixed. the Jersey Journal had an article about it.. I just can't remember exactly when to link to it. A conversation I had with an MUA official (he was helping to figure out a solution to a storm water flooding problem in front of my place) who told me the JCMUA was actually blocking the overflow points with sand bags in order to try to meet the EPA regs.
Posted on: 2012/7/30 0:46
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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Our sewers are designed to put untreated sewage into the river, they just aren't good at even that. The rationale of the CSO system was to capture the 1st 10% of a storm's runoff to the treatment plant on the theory that it contains most of the shit, and from then on the sewers run clean like the bowels of a prepped colonoscopy patient. So given that it's designed to do that, pumps would only help it do it well rather than use the whole sewer system and city streets as a holding tank. We'll simply never see the system truly changed. The cash it would take is staggering, and the MUA can't even keep enough cashflow from vanishing to maintain it properly, never mind rebuild it.
Posted on: 2012/7/30 0:25
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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Oddly, I live 2 blocks east on 5th and we had no flooding.
Posted on: 2012/7/29 19:26
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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It is more than just an issue of pumping stations. The Clean Water Act doesn't allow untreated sewage to be dumped into the Hudson and Hackensack rivers. With combined storm / sewer, it all becomes sewage.
You basically have two options to fix the situation: 1. Separate the storm water from the sewage. Not practical.. you would basically demolish the entire existing system and rebuilt it. Plus, most of the buildings in J.C. have their roof drains tying directly into the sewer system. 2. Dig giant surge tanks (see the post earlier in regards to Tokyo). Atlanta and some other cities have done this. Atlanta's project has been a cluster-f*** of epic proportions. They now have some of the most expensive sewage bills in the country. J.C. will need to be putting in capital improvement plans that will stretch over decades to finally fix this problem. I don't expect that to happen with our current powers-that-be. To make matters worse, we are now tied into the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, having decommissioned the treatments plants located in J.C. The PVSC whacked us with a huge fee increase with nothing to show for it. So our rates are already insanely expensive.
Posted on: 2012/7/29 19:15
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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Agree with all your points Brewster.
Elevation isn't a perfect model, but absent other data it's a useful baseline. The combination of rainfall amounts, drain blockages, the thinness of the sewage pipes on individual west-to-east streets, nearby commercial building runoff, and tidal action can make big differences on what streets get flooded. Generally what happen during downtown flooding is: 1. The west side of Downtown JC gets a lot of runoff from the higher elevations to the west, and from the turnpike. 2. The thin sewage pipes running from west to east to the Hudson river can't handle the flow. 3. The drains typically get blocked with debris which makes flooding worse on the west of downtown. 4. Central downtown typically fares best since there is almost no direct runoff from higher elevations and commerical properties. 5. High rainfall combined with high tides/storm surges can wreak havok in all of downtown (as with Irene) - the water level in the Hudson is too high to allow the sewers to drain, and this backs everything up east to west. We missed an opportunity on partnering with Hoboken on the pumping station solution.
Posted on: 2012/7/29 17:13
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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The flaw with the pure elevation approach is that much of the flooding downtown (and in the rest of the city) has less to do with the elevation of individual areas and everything to do with the crappy sewers. 9th and Brunswick is only a foot lower than 7th & Coles, yet they get flooded, and we don't,and there's areas in the heights that flood. That said, 5th & Jersey is actually quite high for Downtown (16 ft according to Google Earth) vs 7' for Grove & Grand, a notorious flood area. I'll say it again because we need to keep countering the smoke blown by the MUA: we don't have a river problem or a groundwater problem, we have a sewer problem. Other low lying, or even below sea level, cities deal with this by having pumping stations to move the water out of the system so rainfall can flow in from the streets. Even Hoboken recently commissioned a new pump station for their SW zone, which I heard performed well in our recent storms. JC deals with it by saying, and I quote Joe Beckmeyer, MUA chief Engineer:"flooding is an act of God".
Posted on: 2012/7/29 5:02
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
Joined:
2004/2/6 23:13 Last Login : 2021/7/30 1:08 From Jersey City
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5th and Coles flooded after hurricane Irene including homes on 5th St. going east.
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Posted on: 2012/7/29 4:54
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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Have a look at the following map, zoom in to JC street level, and have a play with the sea-level rise in meters. It's also equivalent to building elevation on those streets. http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/new-york.shtml All of the bad flooding in the past 10 years has generally been in basements in the zones < 4m elevation, at least in the NW corner of downtown. This likely holds true in most of downtown, but there may be other local factors, such as age of drains on the street, depth of basement, etc. Perhaps others on the list can chime in. 5th between Jersey and Coles appears to be between 5-6m elevation. Also the nearby embankment acts as storm water reservoir reducing run-off. I'd bet that the risk of basement flooding on that block is relatively low.
Posted on: 2012/7/29 3:55
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Quite a regular
 
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dam,Im glad I live on top of a hill.I could never deal with water in my basement,I guess we all suffer in our own ways,but sewage water in the basement could lead to hep a thru z my advice is to not go near the sewer water,I know the teptation is to go wade around in the turds,but dont,its not as much fun as it looks.and hep is no party either.hep hep horayyy!!! Im so much fun oooo eeee
Posted on: 2012/7/29 0:32
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
Joined:
2005/3/19 3:39 Last Login : 2023/1/15 1:11 From HamiltonPARK
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271
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Can anybody chime in about flooding on 5th between Jersey and Coles? A co-worker moved into a basement unit and is a little concerned after the fact. I've read the threads here but have not seen anything too specific about that area. Thanks in advance.
Posted on: 2012/7/28 23:22
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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Posted on: 2011/10/21 17:50
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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JCSOS, seems to have little follow-through, and needs new life. I saw over 100 members and no one bitching at MUA and City Council meetings.
Posted on: 2011/9/29 2:46
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Just can't stay away
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teacher...so sorry you came home to that...I know the feeling all too well as a house connected to mine left sewer lines open and I have come home to sewer water on more than one occasion.
One small suggestion that may help, I installed these things called Flood Guards (you can find them on Amazon for about $20) in my floor drain and shower drain prior to Irene since I was nervous. They are suppose to act as a back up check valve (if you have one that fails or if you don't have one at all) by dropping down a rubber guard type thing if water tries to come back up through the drain. I'm assuming it worked during irene since the only place I had water come up was from the toilet, not the floor. It's small consulation I know but maybe that could help going forward!
Posted on: 2011/9/27 12:55
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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It's amazing that the city is largely responsible for the prehistoric sewage system and yet the homeowner is the one slammed with clean up costs, sump pump installation, time wasted, new water heaters/furnaces, mold, etc.
The MUA needs to go....
Posted on: 2011/9/27 11:35
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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Like I said upthread, Fulop DID help out with JCSOS, set up and attended a meeting with the MUA and tried to do what 1 councilman could. But they simply demonstrated how unaccountable they are to anyone. Anyone who has engaged them 1 on 1 gets told that somehow it's their own fault. As has been demonstrated on numerous occasions on a variety of topics, 1 councilman can only piss in the wind, especially when the chair of the MUA is Councilman Gaughan's daughter. You have crap in your home and they have no responsibility, the Authority doesn't suffer in the slightest that it's infrastructure fails. To use a phrase that ianmac used elsewhere, they've externalized the cost of their failure. Imagine if PSE&G regularly had gas leaks and explosions all over the city when it rained costing insurers millions, do you think they would get a pass the way the MUA does with it's explosions of sewage in our homes?
Posted on: 2011/9/27 2:58
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
Joined:
2007/4/16 13:46 Last Login : 2023/11/15 11:50 From Village/HP
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Oh no! That sucks, I'm sorry.... When did this happen? Just wondering - with the rain on Fri, I think it was about an inch we got in the afternoon, our shower backed up in our basement and for the first time we think it was sewage, but it drained within the hour. Was that when it happened to you? Is it a basement apt? Ugh....
Posted on: 2011/9/27 2:38
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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seems like once again the town and Fulop are doing nothing.
4 feet of raw sewage floating in my rental unit and City does nothing. Its sad this guy is the best option.
Posted on: 2011/9/27 1:57
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Quite a regular
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The building is a 3 story building with 5 units (basement is unfinished). the lender is asking for 700k and I imagine that the market value of the buildling is around 1.2M.
The realtor thinks that their requirement is high. I'm not sure what is the norm. thanks!
Posted on: 2011/9/22 1:14
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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Flood insurance to the master policy is provided based on replacement cost of the structure and not market value of the combined units. I believe there are different percentages used in the calc. I'll see what I can dig out.
Posted on: 2011/9/22 0:58
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Quite a regular
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Any information on flood insurance. Specifically, I'm trying to understand what other condo owner's master policy covers in building coverage for a small building - 4 to 6 unit building.
I'm having problems with lender's underwriting approving a purchase with a building coverage of $275,000 for a master flood policy.
Posted on: 2011/9/22 0:32
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
Joined:
2007/4/16 13:46 Last Login : 2023/11/15 11:50 From Village/HP
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Thanks for the MUA reminder, Brewster.
To that end, has anyone ever filled this out: http://www.jcmua.com/_vti_bin/shtml.exe/flood%20quest2.htm I just did - I guess I'm not holding my breath, but I'll keep everyone posted if anyone contacts me.
Posted on: 2011/9/13 0:51
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
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McNair has $300k in flooding damage from 8' of water in their basement. What a win for the MUA!! Once again they demonstrate the validity of their business plan of not doing what they're paid to do:get rain and sewer water out of town. Either directly or by insurance premiums we'll end up paying for this, just like we pay for all the flooding damage.
I'm pretty sure replacing the 100 year old cracked brick sewer in front of McNair would not have cost $300k, but it would come from the MUA. They have the perfect business, guaranteed cashflow and absolutely no accountability. If they were actually part of the city Gov't, we could hold the mayor liable, but he can say: "it's not MY fault, they're an autonomous agency!!" How many milllions in property damage will it take before this shifting of the burden will stop?
Posted on: 2011/9/12 23:49
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Just can't stay away
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I saw police / code officers checking permits / contractor licenses for crews doing basement work downtown the other day.
Beware if your crew is not on the up and up
Posted on: 2011/9/12 18:10
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Re: Flooding in Jersey City
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Home away from home
Joined:
2007/4/16 13:46 Last Login : 2023/11/15 11:50 From Village/HP
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With both flood situations we've been in (3 and 4 feet for comparison), after sheetrock/insulation is ripped, we've rented about 3 industrial fans and 3 dehumidifiers for about 3 days. Within 24 hours we typically notice improvement, and by the end it's definitely 100% ok. I imagine if we tried to do it ourselves with regular fans/dehumidifiers (which we will moving forward), it would probably take closer to a week if not more.
Posted on: 2011/9/12 18:03
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