I have a hole in my basement for a sump pump, however I have no sump pump.
I understand that a sump pump is to empty out water that is seeping in the basement, but why would the builder leave a hole in my basement when building the house? Why not just make the foundation completely out of concrete, thereby removing the need for the pump?
I’m sure I’m not understanding the whole sump pump thing here, as my neighbors have them, and most of them have pumps that run. So it would appear that water is leaking into the hole where the sump pump is. Knock on wood, I don’t have any water in my basement, but if the hole wasn’t there, I can’t see how I would get water in my basement in the first place.
Can anyone help unravel the mystery of the sump pump and the dry hole I have in my basement, pre-dug for a sump pump?
A concrete floor can be sealed, but with enough ground water trying to get in through the floor and the walls, windows, and doorways, it usually will anyway. The sump pump can lower the ground water level surrounding your house and decrease it’s eventual degradation of the structure. So if you see water in the hole even if it doesn’t overflow it may still be worth it to install the sump pump. But often it’s just a precaution, if there are ground water problems in your area the builder may just put the hole in anyway even though you may never get any significant accumulation. My house in New York had a sump hole but no pump, and only once in 17 years did the water rise in the hole, so I used a drill pump to empty it a couple of times and that was it. At my current house without the sump pump I’d have an indoor swimming pool.
If your basement floor and 4 walls were made in one single continuous pour with no seams and there was a big heavy rain and the water table rose above the level of your basement floor you’d run the risk of your entire house heaving. Literally trying to float away. Not that it would, hopefully, but if it tried, you’d probably end up with a lot of cracked drywall and structural problems if one side lifted an inch or two and the other side didn’t.
Instead, we catch the water as it nears the edge of the house and pump it away. We also give it a way to enter the basement between the floor and the walls since, in most cases, it’s better to have a few inches of (clean-ish) rain water in the basement then a cracked foundation.
The sump collects ground water. Usually perforated plastic pipe is installed along the footings to collect this water and drain it into the sump. A pump is installed in the sump to discharge the water to the ground outside. Sometimes the water is discharged into a dry well located some distance from the house.
Where does the water come from? Could be runoff from your roof if the downspouts don’t carry it far enough from the house. Could be street runoff if the house is down slope from the street. Could be a high water table caused by a week of heavy rain.
There are cracks between your basement floor and the walls where the water can enter if the level gets high enough. The floor was poured after the footing and walls, so it’s not watertight. There may also be cracks in the walls or floor caused by ground movement.
Better to have the pipes and sump installed during construction rather than have to bust up the floor, install the pipes and restore the floor.
around the walls and under the floor would be crushed rock that water can drain into. if you had very wet conditions with bad drainage, couple days of rain or when snow melts, this would put pressure on your walls and floor, eventually cracking and leaking. the sump pit is there to collect the water and pump it out.
do you need one. your local building code may require it and so the builder put it in. if the code requires it then your conditions make it useful if not necessary.
you may not need one if you have deep sandy soil where 2 inches of rain leave no puddles.
I never thought of most of the things you all mentioned. I have checked the hole from time to time after large rainstorms, etc, and so far, it’s been dry. So, we appear to be lucky. I do know that my neighbor also had a dry sump pump hole until the ground was broken for this house, leading me to believe that we are probably close to the ground water, and maybe a rock was busted up and opened up a path to his basement pump or something.
I don’t know. The house put in after mine didn’t cause any issues for me, so perhaps I just got lucky.
I do think that this must have been a part of the building code, though, as my builder wouldn’t have done it without being forced to.
I have never seen any piping coming into the side of the hole, but based on what I’ve read and what is in this thread, there should be some pipe in there, correct? Perpendicular to the floor, and a few inches to a foot beneath the top of the hole?
this would feed the hole from the ground water sources. I assume.
perhaps I should look into putting one into the basement just in case… it sounds like an inexpensive insurance policy. To that end, it would have been nice if the builder would have done it and then I wouldn’t have to worry about it. Right now, it seems like I’m playing russian roulette with a potential problem.
Not only that, but you should always have the next sump pump on the shelf. They can last a while, often 10 years or more, but sump pumps always fail in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend during the worst storm of the year.
Some houses have drain tile. It’s a pipe with holes in it that runs along the perimeter of the house and then into the sump.
Some houses just have a sump with no bottom.
Take a look at yours, if you don’t see a pipe (or big tube) sticking into it, see if it looks like it has a plastic bottom or if the bottom appears to be gravel or some kind of mesh. If that’s the case, it’s meant to deal with the water table as it rises up during heavy rains.
If it looks like it’s ready to collect water (has a pipe coming into it or an open bottom), you could certainly put a sump pump in it so it’s ready to go. But if it’s never had a drop of water in it, and your basement isn’t finished (so you’re not worried about some minor flooding, you could pick up a small electric pump like this and enough garden hose to reach to a drain. It’ll be cheaper and easier to just keep this on hand and if you ever do get some water coming in, you can just babysit the crock until it’s dry. Of course, IME, if you get that much rain, the crock starts filling a few hours after the rain starts and it takes about a day to stop so you have to decide if your willing to babysit it for that long. Hence why I asked if your okay to deal with some minor flooding in the basement, like if you have to go to work or bed.
I keep meaning to replace mine, just to be on the safe side. But what ever dumbass installed it made it really hard to access. The cover is a solid piece of plastic with a slot cut in it which means I A) wouldn’t be able to fish something out of there it if fell in and B) can’t toss my submersible in if the regular pump dies without cutting the cover off.
Also, the idiot who installed it, braced the pump to the cover with PVC hangers and drywall screws.
If it fails, I’m screwed. And when it’s running, the crock fills up like every 45 seconds so it’s not like I’d have much time to do something before the water is over flowing.
In a perfect world, I’d replace it with a new pump (just because it’s about 15 years old) and backup water driven pump because there’s a water line directly about it so it’s convenient.
The basement is unfinished for now but it is on the plate for something we’d like to do at some point.
and although it is unfinished, there is enough crap that weve stored down there that it would such if we lost it in a flood of some sort. Nothing like rare paintings, but enough stuff that would be tough to replace and cause some heartburn.
the next step for me is to look down in there and see what I have. based on that, I’ll figure what next steps I need to take. I’ve looked at installing sump pumps, and it looks pretty straight forward., so as long as it is, this is a pretty inexpensive thing to do for peace of mind.
Keep in mine code almost certainly makes it illegal to drain it into your sanitary sewer. I’m lucky that I have a connection to the storm sewers, but assuming you don’t, make sure it discharges far enough away from the house the you aren’t pumping the same water over and over.
I have no cover on mine. Originally when I had a lot of leaks around the basement I built a little dam around it to keep stuff from floating in. Now I’ve patched up the leaks so that’s not a problem any more. Mine sits inside a plastic tub and and the hole around is filled with gravel. I put enough gravel in the tub also to stabilize it so it’s not attached to anything. It can fill up fast like that though, changing it in a storm won’t be easy, so I replaced the last one before it failed.
I hadn’t thought of this. I hae a maze of piped down there, and there is one PVC pipe right above the sump pump that has an end cap on it, and the other end goes through the opposite wall, to where I don’t know. This is where I was planning to hook it up, but you are saying that if my PVC pipe exits to the sanitary sewer system, this would be illegal?
I guess I’ll have to have someone look at it. When I first moved in, there was a pipe coming out of my front yard and just dumping into the road, which allowed the water to go into the street storm drain. However, that pipe was cut off and basically buried, and whatever water comes out of it is pumped into the yard, I guess. The pipe is a PVC pipe with holes in it, and it probably runs 30 or so feet.
Many of my neighbors have this pipe running to the end of their yard, where it is nicely incorporated into the concrete of the municipal street curb in front of their house. Mine didn’t get that treatment because the house was built AFTER the street was in, and the moron who put the fittings in for everyone else didn’t think there would be a house built where mine currently sits. Which makes no sense, because the plans for this neighborhood always had this house as part of it.
I’m not the only one this happened to… Just the folks who were unlucky enough to not have a house already built when the real street went in.
So, even though I believe the pipe above the sump pump in my house was intended to go to the public sewer system, are you saying that since it isn’t hooked in, that that would be a problem?
In a lot of jurisdictions it is. The waste water treatment plant really doesn’t want to deal with rain water if they can avoid it. In some cases, it might be allowed.
OTOH, that pipe, that’s capped off, is probably there specifically for you to connect a sump pump to. If I were setting one up, I’d probably just connect it to that without really thinking about it. Make sure to use a check valve.
If it exists high on the wall (rather then low or through the floor), it may very well connect to the storm sewers.
If you’re really concerned, you could try to dig up the plans for your house. Your city hall might have them on file. They might indicate what drains are what.
It does exist high on the wall… It more or less runs the length of wall at ceiling level until it leaves the basement completely. Perhaps this IS what it was intended for.
Still, I’ll probably check. I don’t like guessing when it comes to stuff like this, even if it turns out I’m right.
i have seen where running your sump pipe/hose, even above ground, out to the gutter in the street is also illegal because of the extra load that places on the storm water system; you need to place the hose away from the runoff drainage direction to let it go into the ground.
so maybe your situation was after the discharge into the storm sewer was no longer allowed and it was made to discharge into your soil.
I think part of the motivation for putting in a sump pump hole is that it is verifiable by the purchaser. It is possible to add materials to the foundation to reduce infiltration of water, but these materials are soon hidden, and builders have learned that they don’t actually have to install them because if they merely claim to have installed them nobody can discover otherwise.
I know several people who have discovered by chance that the builder did this to them, for example by happening to show up by surprise during the concrete pouring process, or by later removing foundation or floor pad sections. I personally have learned that builders can leave out hidden components in general, as I discovered my builder installed drywall with only nails and no adhesive, used baseboard hot water type low pressure copper pipe instead of potable water pipe, etc etc. I don’t know how typical this is but my impression it that it’s typical enough to take into consideration when designing a home.
Excellent point. It’s a cheap part to add to a sump pump, just screws into the discharge outlet and you attach the hose to the check valve. Without it your sump pump can become the source of water in your basement, a lot of it.
Also note that most sump pumps can’t run at 100% duty cycle, if it’s on constantly, you need a bigger pump. I say mine is running constantly when it gets to about 1 minute on and 30 seconds off, but that appears to be sufficient to keep the motor from overheating.
And not just that, but if you lose power, they won’t work. This had never been a problem for us until Sandy, when we wound up with about an inch or two of water in the basement (and believe me, I’m very, very grateful that was the worst of it). There are backup systems you can get - thanks for the reminder, as we’re planning on installing such a thing this year.
I haven’t seen one, but there are simple devices that work off the water supply if you have city water you think will maintain pressure. My neighbor got a generator just for the sump pump back up, I had a little generator for that and it didn’t work worth crap, so I’m considering just getting a large generator to maintain power for the house since we have more power losses than water infiltration in storms.