Just got water (rain) at my mothers, wet vac and mops… No sump pump around. Pretty handy here, so i’m going to install a sump pump for her. My question is, for her situation what would be the best location/procedure?
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The house lies below street level by several feet (think of a basement entrance, all the way around the house), and several feet more to get into the actual house. Sandwiched by two houses and their gangways (walk ways) that are at street level. Water typically comes in the front door but there is a drain there as well as a drain outside of the back door. That is it. They usually work very well, but once every couple of years, they don’t take the water fast enough, so the idea is to put a sump pump somewhere. This is why I am here; based on the information i’ve given, where would a good place to put the pump? In the concrete next to the drain where it starts? or inside the house somewhere? What depth should I breach the concrete and are there any tools/techniques to make this easier?
I have found methods on google, but most wind up suggesting a professional. I know I can do this myself, just looking for a starting point. Any ideas? factual and methodical as possible are appreciated as well as clever ideas that you’ve used.
Thanks!
In my house, the sump was installed at the lowest point in the basement. Water tends to flow from a nearby hill and then wells up from under the foundation. So the sump is about a foot, maybe less, under the slab of the basement floor.
Be aware however that the city or town you’re in may not want you pumping ground water into their sewage system. I was told that I could no longer pump sump water into the sanitary sewer and had to instead pipe the water into my yard. I’m not sure what the reason for this was but IIRC it had something to do with the dirt and minerals found in the ground water. So before you do anything make sure that you’re not going to have issues with the municipality over the disposal of the water.
Also, test for radon if you’re in an area where that is a problem. Cutting a hole in the foundation will make it a lot easier for radon to escape into the house and that could mean the difference between having to remediate or not.
Ah, thank you. See this is why I love this board. Two things that may not have crossed my mind, radon, and where to expel the pump water. Thanks! I think I’ve found a spot, nicely hidden too, it seems to be where water pools up a little bit when it floods. Depending on if the rain is going to be fierce again, I may or may not just keep the shop vac out and do the sump next spring when the ground thaws.
Not a plumber, but every sump I’ve had depended on a circuit of drainage tiles around the foundation directing water into the sump. How is the water going to get into your sump?
Be careful where you discharge, that you do not create a problem for your neighbors.
When I lived on the NW side, no one had sumps. In our unfinished basement, the washer and drier were raised a couple of inches and nothing was stored on the floor. Anyone who finished their basements occasionally got damage. As a kid, I thought some type of floating/retracting standpipe would make me rich…
So the water isn’t coming in from under the foundation, but rather from runoff from surrounding properties? A sump pump typically gets water from beneath the foundation (or underground around the exterior perimeter), or at least does in my case. If this is water flowing on top of the ground into a doorway, how would a sump pump help? Is the drain backing up because wherever it goes isn’t clearing fast enough? In that case I could see a pump helping at that point of backing up. Or maybe you just need bigger drains.
I’ll let more knowledgeable people answer from here, but I thought I’d chime in with my limited experience (had to redo my basement and went through a lot with contractors and learned a ton relevant to MY discussion, but maybe not yours). It seems prudent to at least have a professional come out and come up with a plan. Then you’ll at least know what they would use to take care of this.
Oh, and yeah, the city typically frowns upon discharging into sanitary sewers. Here I was allowed to discharge at the street, which then flows down the gutter into the storm sewers.
You really need to keep surface water from entering the house in the first place. You can put a sump pump into the basement, just put it at the lowest point, shouldn’t be hard to find if there’s water down there. It has to go somewhere though, I doubt any municipality will allow you to use the sewer system these days. So you’ll want that sump pump close to a window. There are pumps that will work on the floor needing only an 1/8" of water to operate, but it’s tricky to use those with a float valve and if they get stuck on the motor can burn out easily. Submersible pumps all eventually fail from leaks, so if you can make a hole in the floor do that and get a post type pump where the motor is out of the water altogether. You’ll need several inches at least, at least a foot for good operation. You’ll also need a well to contain the pump with some sand and gravel to keep dirt out of it. I use a 5 gallon bucket with a bunch of holes drilled in it for that in the old portion of the house, our new addition has a plastic well cast into the concrete floor.
If you don’t have an exit for the water below the grade then you have to worry about freezing depending where you are. When we first moved in here I had to run the hose out the window and as soon as the bitter cold hit it would freeze up and I had to pour salt down the sump hole every night to prevent that. Later after some work I was able to use the pipes from an old septic system to run the water out through the wall and into a drywell.
But in the end you need to keep that surface water out of the house to start with. That will require some grading and gravel filled trenches to run to direct the water away from the house, possibly some sealing of the foundation, and likely you’ll still need a pump.
Most utilities require a permit to connect to their sanitary sewer and most of them don’t want rainwater and groundwater entering their sanitary sewer pipes. Modern sanitary sewers are sized for wastewater, not wastewater plus stormwater. (Too much rainwater falls too fast, pipes back up, sewers overflow at a manhole or into someone’s basement.)