... my basement, I mean.
We badly need a sump pump. Maybe two, but definitely one where the water pools every spring.
How hard is it to install a sump pump? Is that a job for a pro, or can I do it with power tools? We have a fieldstone basement, with a cement floor. There is no well yet, just a low spot that collects water.
Any and all advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Donna
This is a serious job to build a drywell in your basement especially since should have been done before pouring the floor. A bit of major remodeling will be required including some brutal manual labor not to mention the plumbing and exavation for the pump and line. An experienced plumbing company would be best cause you really need a crew to put this thing in.
...or you could just dig a hole at the low spot, buy a sump pump from the local big box home store and run a hose or pipe out of the basement...
A pedestal type pump will work in a 5 gallon sump if you use a check valve to prevent backflow so you have to dig is a 10 gallon hole. You can do it with hand tools if you must. You will earn what you don't spend.
But first figure out the best way to do it. Is the water coming up through the floor? Or in through the wall and collecting at the low spot? From one section? Or more?
A slightly better picture of the situation will allow some one to better help you.
"Donna" attempted to ask what they thought was a serious question by saying:
From my experience in most cases a sump & pump is just a way to throw money at a problem on the cheap and still not fix the issue. If you've really got basement water problems spend the bucks on something like the B-Dry system and be done with it. Just be sure to check out the contractor in your area before hiring though, there are a lot of 'not so satisfying' operators in the basement waterproofing business. Not to mention a lot of people selling systems that will fail or not work at all. Do some serious research, call a lot of vendors for assessments/quotes, check out the vendors you are considering with BBB and whoever else you can find in your area.
Is that in the middle of the floor, or near the edge. Like the other guy asked, how is the water getting there?
So is the water coming in through the rocks? Are the walls painted?
You need to give more details.
The hard part of digging the sump is getting through the cement, which iiuc is likely to be 6? inches thick.
The hard part about getting through the cement imo would be keeping the boundaries of the hole you are making within bounds.
If it were a one-inch piece of cement, you could draw a boundry and use a cold chisel and a heavy hammer, and by all means goggles, to chisel a quater or half inch line to mark the border, and then when you went after the middle**, the hole would probably remain within the lines.
**See if you can lift the lightest electric jack hammer they rent, or is there a better tool for this. The jack hammer was easy to use. And lifting it was easy the first few times, but that got harder quickly as I got tired. I'm 5'8" and my arms were almost parallel to tthe ground. If I had been taller, or had stood on something 4 to 8 inches high, it would have been easier. But if you rent for a whole day, you can rest in between. But there must be something smaller and lighter for a little hole like this, even if it 6? inches thick.But since it's a lot thicker, is that what one uses a power hamnmer for? Or an air chisel? Can she rent a compressor and is there a cemenmt cutting device?
Or should she just make the hole and then replace whatever cement breaks that shoudlnt' have.
After you are through the floor, digging the rest of the hole should be pretty easy, and then you have to line the hole with a cylinder of some sort so that the earth doesn't collapse. Then make an exit for the cisharge pipe, and run the water away from your house. Putting in the pump and connecting it should be pretty easy.
Don't listen to this guy, it is easier than you may think. Yes, it does take a bit of labor though to break concrete and dig. .
You buy a pump and you buy a plastic sump liner made for exactly this purpose. The hard part is cutting the concrete floor. You can score it with an abrasive blade in a circular saw, they with a rented jack hammer or muscle and a sledge hammer, you break out the concrete. Dig for the sump, then put some stone and the liner, put the pump in place, then run a drain line.
They showed this on Ask This Old House a couple of months ago. Sorry Lawrence, maybe you are not up to it but Tom and a woman did the job in her house. Check out some information on episode 425.
The "B-Dry system" list two types of products. The first I found listed was a fancy name for a sump pump system. The second is the useless paint - spray on trash. I think I would avoid B-Dry based on the way the market their product if for no other reason.
Hi, Donna.
BTDT. One option (worked for me):
HTH, J
I had a second pump put in a corner that wasn't draining properly. The guy cut out a square with a circular saw, dug a pit, and worked a plastic basin in. A lot of work, but nothing too difficult. The dust was HORRIBLE. I had him plumb it to the sanitary sewer, which I later found out is illegal; but it only came on when the first pump was overwhelmed, so it didn't amount to much.
Since you obviously don't have drain tiles, getting one corner dry may not do much for the other corners; which is why I had the problem. My house originally had no sump or tiles, but they put a sump in after it flooded 3 times the first year (I found this out after calling the original owner when I started having problems.)
I agreed with everything you said prior to this point.
Absolutely. In the townhouse next to me, someone rerouted the output to the house drain (and neatly cemented the hole where the output pipe had been). This means that if the sewer backs up, the sump pump will pump that water into the drain which goes to the sewer which is backing up. And that's a real possibility with my house and the three next to it, which are the lowest in the n'hood, and which do flood every few years when rain fills the stream which overflows into the sewers and fills them. And I told the new owner at least 5 years ago about all this, and he still hasn't done anything.
Oh, you're probably referring to the fact that even if this doesn't happen, it overloads the sewer and is likely illegal too. That's a good reason also.
This why I posted. Have you tried this? The volume out of my pump far exceeds what I believe can flow through a garden hose, even the wider ones. Even a short length of such narrow hose (compared to the
2 or 1 1/2 inch pipe the pump takes) would restrict flow, I'm sure, and even more if the hose were longer. My plastic pipe feeds into a buried 4 inch pipe (and ftr that isn't coupled on but fits loosely in case, I think, the buried pipe collapses or is clogged.)Yeah, if I had a backup that would be good -- I plan to put one in -- and it makes sense and be easier to make the first and only pump one that has battery backup. Get the kind that runs on 110 if is there, and uses the battery if the 110 fails. Some places 110 is more likely to fail at the same time there is more flooding, altough that has never happened to me, yet.)
(Although then of course comes the question whether to use battry backup that requires maainenance, or that water powered thing whose name I have forgotten. IIRC they are in total about the same price. The water powered is harder to install but requires no maintenance, and no bulky battery once it is in. As long as one pays the water bill and doesn't get his water disconnected. That' a lot more rare than even getting gas or phone disconnected, right?)
I forgot about dust. Wear a good dust maak and probably keep the vacuum running all the time, to clean the air. If there were a window, I'd recommend a fan blowing out a window. (I did this when I sanded my floor, with an old 14 inch fan from the trash. It ran all day with no problem, and then failed just as I was about to turn it off.)
i"m not in a position to judge, and the OP's basement might never get that wet, buy this sounds like an advantage over a regular pump and a backup, as opposed to the single pump I just recommended. My pump has only been overwhelmed once in 28 years, but it would sure have been nice to have two pumps at that time. (Or a bigger first pump. I suppose they sold one but I only looked for the same size I had since it had worked fine for the first 15 years. Rusted through then but the new ones have plastic pipe at the water level and I think will last 2 or 3 times as long.)
Ahh the amount of dust from cutting concrete is WAY WORSE than sanding, jackhammer better choice.
dust is abrasive, lightweight, goes into cloud might get in furnace etc.
plus if you jackhammer the repaired concrete is way less likely to crack.
thew nice smooth edge of masonary blade equals poor adhesion.:(
ideally the underground drain runs to day light somewhere. gravity tends to be reliable. even if its a lot of digging you will appreciate knowing your sump cant fail. plus a 4 inch PVC line can carry way more water than a backup sump pump
if you must go pump, do TWO, with seperate outlets, completely seperate everything.
perhaps the primary draind into a downspout line?
thake the backup thru the wall and let it spray out of side of home if the water will run away downhill.
having just one pump or pump sharing lines etc leaves you more open to failure.........
Buy pump, plug it in, stick it in the low spot, stick the hose out the door, you're done. At least that's the way it is in my field stone basement. I don't know why you would need a "well", in my basement the pump sits by the stairs, which is the lowest point of the basement, so as the water runs in though the walls, in runs down to the pump. The pump only comes on when it senses it's sitting in water, and voila, dry basement. It's a total no-brainer.
What if the basement floor, like most, is pretty flat and has no low spot? The no brainer is to have a sump, otherwise the floor needs a couple of inches of water before the pump starts.
IMHO,
Installing a sump pump can be done by average handy people. However, this is very conditional. Depends on your situation, and since sump pumps are a small part of a larger 'dry basement' solution, you should have an 'expert' evaluate your situation. Please verify they are 'experts' first. :D
tom @
Waste money? For a total of around $150-200 (today's prices) I can (and did) install a sump pump in my basement changing what had been a flooded floor into a dry basement all year long. Any system that is going to keep water out of the basement to begin with is going to run in the thousands.
Were I to do it today I would do the same thing, using the same tools and I am now 72. Wouldn't have a problem at all using that electric rotarly hammer to drill the perimeter holes every 3-4 inches then bust out the concrete with a sledge. My drain line is buried and exits into a ditch 100 ft away.
Harry K
OK, maybe there's something I don't get (and an old fieldstone foundation probably drives a different set of options than my block foundation...), but, isn't the basement wet when the water is flowing towards the place where the sump pump is? So, it's not really a complmete dry basement solution.
Banty
Agreed, but my 18th century basement floor is SO not level, and I think that's the case with most field stone foundation basements. I still can't believe some idiot poured a concrete floor for mine, sometime in the early
1900s, I'd guess. It would have been MUCH better to have left it dirt, as it is in the root cellar portion of the basement. The root cellar gets wet, but the water soaks right into the floor. Problem solved.
You guys are awesome. What a wealth of information!
Since so many of you have asked for additional info, I'll respond en mass. The basement is fieldstone, painted with drylok. This keeps the bulk of the basement dry (although in spots it needs to be repointed, which is another "how do I do it" question, which I'll pose once the more pressing problem has been solved.
The house is 80 or 90 years old. The floor is poured cement over the original dirt floor. The basement is in two rooms - one finished as above, and sculpted so that water runs to the sides of the room, and then into a pipe exiting the house. I think this is called a French drain? Whatever it's called, it works beautifully.
The water comes into the smaller unfinished room. It comes in through two places 1) under the door from the garage (which is below the surface of the floor. From the garage, you go down some cement stairs to the basement door. Water pools in the stairwell when the water tables are high, and runs under the door. I'm thinking a better door would fix this problem. The second place water pours in is through the original house's coal chute, which doesn't seem to ever have been sealed over. Water comes in through a small passageway (I hate to say chimney - it looks like a cross between a pipe and a chimney) which behind the cement wall, and opens into the basement, at a low spot. I have been assuming that this is where the original coal furnace lived, originally. From the outside, it's all been turfed over, but when I was landscaping last year, i uncovered what looks like a 3x5 by 8foot deep coal chute, filled with coal and dirt, then tarped over, and turfed over. It's amazing that more water doesn't get in, frankly.
I hope that is enough information. It's kind of a weird set up, as you can see.
Having read all of your thoughtful posts, it looks an awful lot like the job of installing a well is going to be beyond my abilities. It also looks like it might be prohibitively expensive, unless the "put a sump pump in the low spot and run a hose out the door" idea is feasible. Is it?
The solution seems to be to excavate the coal chute (But with what? I tried to dig it out last year, and the fist-sized lumps of coal make it impossible to do by hand. The location (in the corner of the house, flush with the walls) makes it impossible to get a piece of earthmoving equipment in there). I can't tell what the walls of the chute are made of -- they could be cement, or they could be dirt. Or metal. Or some combination of all three. Would excavating it by hand (litterally digging at it with a trowel) a couple of feet down and pouring cement seal it off do you think?
I'm kind of baffled by the whole situation, which is why it has continued for the three years since we bought the house. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Grateful thanks,
Donna
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