Cellar Drainage question

[Chia Pet]

I own a home somewhere between 70-100 years old. In the cellar is a pit, about 3 feet deep, which contains a floor drain and the sewer drain caps for access to the traps.

After heavy rains and flooding, for the first time in 6 months of owning the house, I passed through the basement and heard running water. Coming from the side of the pit, right by the floor drain, was a steady and strong flow of water into the floor drain. It doesn't seem to be coming from a pipe, but from the concrete of the pit (actually, a hole in the concrete).

I'm glad it's going into the pit and down the drain, and I have one of the driest cellars in town. But after heavy rains I never saw this happen before. It seems a drainage system would have connected tot he pipes rather than spilling through a hole into the pit.

Does anyone know if this is by design in old homes, or is this some kind of freakish drainage and possibly erosion?

[gg]

[Carolyn Marenger]

Sounds to me like you have a sump. That's a hole below the floor level that any water int he ground under the house should flow to, as your's seems to be doing. With the addition of a sump pump and flexible piping, you can then pump all that ground water out of the house, ideally to another sump outside, (lower than the one inside). The water then flows from the outside sump back into the ground and downhill away from the house.

Wouldn't hurt to check for water leaks and erosion damage, but I suspect you just need a sump pump. This fall, lots of North America, paritcularly North East is seeing lots of rain. The ground is a lot wetter than it normally is.

We just inherited the house we are in, and with all this fall rain we are seeinging similar "never before" conditions. We have more water in and on the gound this fall than we have in all but the heaviest of spring thaws. The basement here never had any drainage, and the original sump was a hole about 8" deep. I have since put in drainage, dug the sump to a more proper 3' deep, added a sump liner, and just in case, I dug a second sump in the other end of our basement (the crawlspace) and placed a sump pump there as well. In case one burns out, the other should still stop a flood.

Next spring, I am replacing the french drains around the house, and putting in proper underground pipes for the sump and general drainage. That should help here.

I've got one two. Actually two now, as the heavy rains this fall have put more water in our basement than it has ever had - including spring thaw & spring rain. Places outside that are normally puddles after a heavy rain have compined