Installing sump pump question

After the recent flood in my basement from the 8 day deluge of rain in the Northeast , I'm thinking of installing a sump pump. Most people say to dig 2 feet deep, but what if your water table is high? There is a

2" pipe in my basement floor where an old well used to be and when I measure the water level inside ( on normal days) it is 14" below the floor, so how do I accomodate the sump pit?
Reply to
Mikepier
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I probably should have asked this question first. Does the water in my old well pipe represent what my water table actually is? If not, thats great, then at least I can dig the entire 2 feet. I guess I will not know until I start digging. During the flood, the water in my pipe was 2 " above the basement floor. But the most water I saw was about an inch on the floor only in the corners. There was nothing in the middle of the floor. The water did not recede until I saw the water in the pipe go below the floor line. So thats why I figured it could actually be the water table, but I could be wrong.

Reply to
Mikepier

I would dig the pit and see what the normal water table is. The water in your old well pipe may have natural pressure raising it. If the water table is high, just try to keep the pump below the floor and above the normal water table. If you install it in the water table it'll probably run continuously during wet seasons

Reply to
RBM

You need a hole about 2 feet deep, regardless of the water table, which you can't control. You can always set the pump to cycle on and off at whatever level you want by adjusting the float.

The bigger question is if there is a drainage system installed around the foundation to direct water to the sump pump hole. If you just have a hole by itself in one corner of the basement, it's typically not going to prevent water from appearing on the floor in a corner 30 ft away. It will however, generally prevent a major flood from filling the basement, as the water will make its way to the sump eventually.

Reply to
trader4

I'm not sure what is an Artesian well. Are you saying this is what I have?

Reply to
Mikepier

With a concrete slab there is all that crushed stone underneath it that fills up with water. When you form the sump pit with concrete you can put weep holes in it at the level of the crushed stone. My thinking is that with a concrete slab if you have water pushing up through in one spot (initially) the crushed stone underneath it is most likely submerged. For a lot with a high water table (like mine) this seems intuitive enough. Not sure if this applies to homes with surface drainage issues.

Reply to
sleepdog

Not necessarily, but it would be one reason that the level of the water in the well pipe would be different from the level of the ground water table

Reply to
RBM

Reformatted a bit, below:

That's a bit misleading, though. If you have an impermeable barrier, (usually a layer of solid rock) with water trapped below it, then you an have a well that pierces that barrier with a water level in the pipe that's higher than the surrounding water level.

But for most practical purposes, the water level in the pipe can be reguarded as the water-table, yes.

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Reply to
Goedjn

You didn't say so in any post, but I gather that the water in the corners seeped in through the walls, and also some water came in trough the pipe in the floor.

I have some experience with sumps and perforated corrugated plastic pipe surrounding my basement outside to accept the water and channel it to my sump, but no experience with wells or houses on slabs.

Nonetheless: It seems to me that if you dig a sump and put in a sump pump, you're also going to have to consider this pipe. You have to either cap it, or attach another pipe to it and run that pipe to the sump. Or somehow handle water that backs up through the pipe.

If you have a basement sink that might someday overflow, perhaps because the drain gets clogged or because the sewer that it feeds into it is flooded by a rising stream, it would be nice if the sump were near the sink and could catch the overflow. OTOH most people don't have sink overflows, you want the washing machine on one side of the sink, and there might well be other reasons to put the sump somewhere else.

If you are not willing to dig outside down to below the slab the house sits on, look into waterproof paint for inside the basement. It has to go where the leak is. In my case that was on the cinderblock. But it did an amazingly good job for the 3 more years we had the house. (An old house my mother lived in until her first husband died, which she rented after she married my father.)

Part or most of the pump will sit underwater all the time. The motor won't. It's 40 inches higher than the inlet. So it doesn't matter if the bottom foot or 18 inches is always under water. You adjust the float level to control how high the water has to be before the pump goes on. Mine didn't go on more than once or twice for 10 months at a time. Now it's been going on every 10 or 20 minutes for a couple weeks. When the water table drops again (It's probably dropping a half inch every day, 3 inches a week), it will go back to normal. Maybe in 2 or 3 weeks.

P&M

Remove NOPSAM to email me. Please let me know if you have posted also.

Reply to
mm

I concur with Mike below. I will add : since water seeks low spots, you won't waste time by trying the following except for possible water damage if it fails..mine worked. I had inadequate drain tubes r****ng my basement and ended up installing a second basket. Just another hole for water to flow into can be a final solution.

I rented a Bosch electric jackhammer and bought a standard sump basket 36?deep and 20? diameter.

I dug the hole 180 deg from the original ....creating two sump pump holes. I had difficulty getting that new depth so I only dug to 20" and cut the bottom of the basket out. ..then put a couple of inches of river rock on the bottom, then the pump. I put check valves in each, and y'd the 2?" pipes into one outlet. It worked when needed. It's a long story but those pumps ran every 40 minutes 24/7 300 days a year. With the paint and the extra hole and pump the carpet never got wet. Even with Akona or ?? UGL Dry lok etc... water seal paint (follow the application directions religiously).. I had damp spots on the wall because of wicking.

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If the exterior of the basement was not tuck pointed smooth like the interior..even with asphalt and vinyl exterior coatings, water running down the wall on the outside will wick in. Remember that...finish the exterior blocks...no slag ...if you are doing new construction.

Reply to
Carl

A few years ago our area experienced a very unusual rain event, about a foot of rain over a 24 hour period. The forecasters were calling it a

500-year rain event or something like that. We got a little bit of water in a couple corners of the basement. My reaction: now I know what it takes to get water in the basement, and it is not going to happen very often. I decided it ain't broke and I ain't gonna fix it. You might want to think along those lines too, before taking a jackhammer to your basement floor. How unusual were the recent rains? How important is to you to have zero tolerance for water in the corner? -- H
Reply to
Heathcliff

Without predjudice to why, it's fairly well accepted that weather patterns are changing. I wouldn't put all that much faith in that "once every 500 years" thing. Even aside from that, weather tends to come in clumps, so even if it *IS* once in 500 years, it's likely to be more like four of the next seven years, and then 2000 years before it happens again...

Reply to
Goedjn

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