Diane Hopp says she doesn’t have a green thumb, so if her neighbors were around, they might be surprised to see her spraying a garden hose -  particularly in December inside the living room of a newly renovated home. 

“It really bothers me to see all this mess, and that we did it,” she said.  

The insurance agent from Petersburg was one in a line of hose-wielders helping christen the small, frame structure on the edge of downtown Springfield - fondly nicknamed “flood house” - as part of an unusual experimentto assist the untold thousands who bemoan indoor floodingfrom the showers of spring and the burst pipes of winter.  From The State Journal-Register.