I have a client who seems to have the water table rise to the level of his basement floor periodically. We don’t know if there is a footing drain but it would be a huge hassle to put one in if there isn’t – and even then, to daylight it is not very likely.
He does have a floor drain that connects to a greywater drain line and the thought is to install a sump and to pump from it into the floor drain. The idea would be to lower the water table right under the house enough to keep it below the floor.
My question regards how a sump is configured. My image is that they typically gather water that flows into them from above – but we would like to take in water from the sides so that the water table level can be lowered as far as possible. Are sumps sometimes perforated on the sides to let water in that way?
Any other thoughts/comments?
Thanks – Roy
Replies
Poor mans sump kit
Cheap float operated pump inside a 5 gallon plastic bucket riddled with holes & a mesh to cover the holes to keep rocks out.
Do you look to the government for an entitlement, or to GOD for empowerment. BDW
I've done them just the way Bill described but always put an inline check valve. I had a client call me once said she couldn't understand how much water she had under her house but the sump pump ran constantly...yea you guess it, it was pumping the same water over and over.
You can avoid this depending on how you plumb it but a long verticle run before a turn will drop back down into the bucket after the pump shuts off and fill it back up again hence the pump running constantly.
I have a client with EXACTLY the same situation on the North side of their house in the crawl. I've piped all the downspouts together, and run them a long way from the house as an experiment, but the North side of the yard just slopes too much into the house. The ground water is coming up through the slab and discoloring the glued-down pre-finished floor in the entry.
Previously - I installed a sump pump in a cast concrete basin in a patio on the East side, to keep surface water from coming under the door, and waterproofed a basement section on the South side with Seal-O-Flex products.
On the West side, I built an entry tower - no water problems! It's a complicated 4-level built in the 50's, with two levels of walk-out basement.
I start this work Wednesday, will post some pix. I plan to put a small pump in a bucket, fed with perf pipe in a sock; pumped into a sewer line (cleanout) through a trap.
Forrest
I've done the 5-gallon bucket in a hole thing that plumbbill mentioned. It works fine, but has that "faux redneck" look to it. (-:
Running the sump into drain lines works great, as long as the drain lines are clear. But if the drain line plugs up, the water is gonna go somewhere.
I once came home at the farm during a real gully-washer of a rain. Mom said the sump pump had been running for 2 hours straight, but the water was getting deeper in the basement. I went down to find that the drain wasn't keeping up with the pump. So the sump pump was just blowing water back out the floor drain and it wasn't really running outside anywhere. We got some scraps of pipe and ran it out a window to get the water level down.
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Something like that also happened with the SHFH. The sump pump runs into the sewer line. (illegally) Sometime during construction, half-round piece of PVC pipe found it's way into the sewer outside the house.
Over several months, TP got hung up on the piece of PVC and eventually plugged up the sewer. One morning I woke up during a heavy rainstorm to find the sump pump backing water up into the bathtubs and leaking around the wax seals of the toilets.
Since then, we've drilled some 1/4" holes in the caps of the cleanouts out in the yard. So if the sewer plugs up again at least it won't back water up into the house.
Five gallon bucket - HAH!
Kitty litter is "mo' faux redneck". I like 'em because they're free, and the flat sides are nice. I just cut a 4-1/4" hole, and snap the first convolution of the pipe inside. Holds great, and I can silicone if need be.
I used this one in a job today.
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Forrest
Edited 3/30/2006 5:47 am by McDesign
Just sinking a sump basin into the ground can work or it can be an expen$isve exercise in futility.
First way do you think that it is a water table problem and not a problem with surface drainage? When does the problem occur? What about the neighbors, do they have water problems and/or sumps. And if sumps how much do they run? What is the terrain and drainage like?
The first thing to do is to rule out surface drainage problems and see that the gutters are drained away from the house and that the ground is sloped away from the house.
A friend of mine bought a house that had serious water problems. Enough that it caused a foundation wall to bulge in 8". "Fixes" had been made trying to patch the cracks and an interior french drain & sump installed. But all of no use.
The foundation was fixed with some engineered beams, the gutters fixed, the ground grades so that water would drain away fromthe house, and a patio that had sunk towards the house was mudjacked. In the 4 years that she has been in the house the only time that the sump pump ran was when I stuck a hose in it to test it and find where it discharged.
Afterwards I finished the basement and did some re-aragement of the drain pipes under the slab.
The house was about 50 yo and the concrete poured direct only clay.
There was no gravel and if there was a problem with "water table" just sinking a pump basin would have only drained the water from within a few inches around the basin.
And where does the "gray water" floor drain go to? It does not use a pump and if it is truely gray water then you can use that drain.
IF it is truely a water table issue, removing the bottom of the container is better than holes in the sides. Put a 6" layer of stone in the bottom of the hole, add a layer of geotech fabric and drop the sump pit in the hole on top of the fabric.
But, as someone mentioned, if there isn't gravel under the slab, you might not accomplish very much.
Typically a sump is connected to drain tile and/or is perforated to let sub-slab water in.
Note that in many parts of the country it's illegal to feed a sump pump into a sanitary sewer drain. It's also just plain stupid to feed a sump pump into a septic tank.
happy?
Also, as has been mentioned, it's usually possible to fix or greatly reduce this sort of problem by attending to drainage around the house --
-- Route downspouts well away from the house
-- Slop soil away from the house for at least 5 feet.
-- Eliminate any standing water within ten feet of the house.
happy?
As promised, here are pix of today's sump pump job. Last big rain 2 weeks ago, there was a calculated 125 gallons of water along this area! In the exterior picture, I'm working at the level of the french doors, but over on the left in the crawl under the master area. You can see my corrogated drain pipe that tied all four north downspouts together to attempt to stop the water - made absolutely zero difference.
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The wood floor picture is behind the front door; the water coming up through the slab is discoloring the factory finish on the glued-down floor.
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I dug down beside the foundation, pitched my trench toward the middle, put my sleeved perfed pipe into a KITTY LITTER BUCKET (I like them because they have flat sides and are free, and they REALLY look redneck).
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Once it all fit and was pitched correctly, I put in 3200 lbs of 57 stone (hauled in with another kitty litter bucket) to bed and cover all the pipe.
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The pump goes through a check valve and then out to daylight thru 1-1/4" PVC.
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After the pix, I pulled the 6-mil VB back over everything.
We'll wait for a big rain and see what happens!
Forrest
goimg thru the search pages and run across your post,how did this job turn out.i have the exact same problem.just trying to get ideas. thanks larryhand me the chainsaw, i need to trim the casing just a hair.
My goodness you are a artist..Very clean and functional. stinky