On Sat, 19 Jan 2013 22:13:05 +0000, Apellation Controlee
wrote:

Presumably the pump was a manual one - or did he have his own
generator?

I only saw an electric one in place, but it would have been trivial to
drop a manual one in. When it floods there, the power supply is
intact. The house has a history of flooding, being at the foot of a
hill and dodgy rainwater drains in the road unable to carry it all
away, so the owner was driven to take measures.

I was thinking only that loss of grid power is often a consequence of
area flooding.

That particular house suffered from a more localised problem, though.
Quite a decent house, apart from that once-every-few-years little
problem