Need advice on lawn damage from sump pipe
Hello everyone,
I’m glad I found this forum, and hope someone could give me some sort of advice or ideas for my problem in my lawn.
It seems like the sump pump is running every few seconds to every minute. It discharges water too frequently and eventually damaged my lawn which I knew recently. My home is right by the lake so I’m not sure if that is why the sump pump is running frequently. The soil is very very wet near where the area where water goes down.
I asked the lawn company what they suggest and the quote I got was to put the pipe under the ground and connect it 60 ft down the hill. To the lake is 100 ft down, so I was thinking to pull it all the way down towards to the lake if the land management gives the permission. If it is connected half way to the lake I’m afraid the same damage will happen at the lower sloped lawn area.
I think the water is leaking at under the pipe too… Who should I call for this type of issue? Plumber? Structure engineer?
thanks a lot in advance!
Replies
find a good contractor. you need to find out why there is so much water in the basement/crawl space, where its coming from, and how to stop it.
then you can address a longer drain line however far the neighborhood association allows.
You have several different problems.
Why the basement is leaking is the first. Could be due to poor waterproofing, could be because the basement is simply too low -- the floor of the basement should be at least 5 feet (maybe 10) above the (high water) level of the lake. Of course, regardless of the cause (unless it's a waterproofing problem in one small corner of the basement, say), there's not much you can do to fix the leaking.
(Though I am reminded of a problem with a Habitat house that sat near a creek near me. The sump pump was running every 5 minutes, even in relatively dry weather. They thought they were going to have to raise the house and put in 2 feet of fill, but then it was discovered, quite by accident, that the water service connection was leaking out under the street -- fixed that and the basement became bone dry.)
As to the sump pump drainage, yes, you need to consider what happens to the water once it leaves the house.
First, you should find out what the rules are. It may be that you can't discharge anything within 100 feet and you're already on thin ice. Or it may be that you'd be allowed to run the drain line all the way into the lake (though I'd have reservations about doing this, even if allowed).
Wherever the water is discharged, you need to consider erosion and related issues. Generally, for a discharge that is this frequent, you should create a "swale" below the discharge point, and line it with coarse gravel for several feet. Even if you discharge into the lake, you need to consider how this occurs, so as to not stir up sediment in an unnatural fashion -- perhaps placing concrete tiles or some sort of rip-rap under the discharge point.
Dont just get a structural engineer; get a hydraulic engineer as well. And get them both to consult with DanH first. They'll ll need to at least fiqure out if your home's 100 foot distance up from the lake is gonna remain 5-10 feet above the high water level of the lake. That's going to take a lot of consultation and some really complex calculations.