Sump-pump drainage

[Eric G]

I would appreciate some tips/advice on how to best proceed with my sump-pump drainage.

My sump-pump goes off mainly in the spring and fall and occasionally at other times depending on a heavy rain or heater, A/C activity.

The root cause is poor drainage around my house (there's a big hill in the back) and clay in the soil just a foot deep.

A friend suggested I bury an unsightly sump pump drainage hose. I out it off for a couple of years and now am starting the project. Besides having an unsightly hose, the lawn area that gets the sump discharge is ripe with every imaginable weed you could think of.

So the plan is to dig a trench, fill it with some gravel and then place a pipe with drainage holes above the gravel, and then place more gravel on top of the pipe and finally cover with grass.

The soil is very dry now and tough to dig. I've gone down one foot so far and 30 feet in length (manually). I used some water yesterday to try to soften the soil for digging. Much to my surprise and dismay, the water dissipated everywhere except for the end of the trench, where it's most important not to collect.

Here's where I can use some advice. I was going to end the pipe where it is now, 30 feet from the house on an angle. But now that I see the water collecting there, I have to alter my course. If I take it out another 50 feet I can reach a road drain. If I did this how would I drain the pipe into the road drain without being obvious about it?

At what point would I change from contained pipe to pipe with holes for drainage?

Any other tips/advice would be most appreciated. Eric

[Tim Fischer]

I saw a neat little device at Home Depot the other day which was made for situations like yours. It goes in the lawn next to the curb you want to drain into. When water (from a sump or gutter drain) collects, it pops up, similar to a pop-up sprinkler head, and shoots the water over the curb. Then it goes back unobtrusively under the surface.

-Tim

[meirman]

In alt.home.repair on Sat, 05 Jul 2003 05:26:35 GMT "Tim Fischer" posted:

That is cool.

I might also check, anonymously, if it is allowed to run the water into the road drain (do mean a ditch that parallels the road?)

When I lived in suburban Indianapolis we only had a ditch, although some owners put in corrugated culvert and built their lawn above it, but I think for both groups the downspouts were connected to ditch out front, more than 100 feet away.** I'm sure this was all proper in that jurisdiction. (We had no sump pumps then, and septic tanks for sewage.)

Also, you've had enough exercise. Maybe you should consider renting a trench digger. Aren't they pretty small.

**BTW, all the local ditches converged in a big ditch a mile away. Next to it ran "Ditch Road". I always meant to follow the big ditch to the Gulf of Mexico, but I never did.

Meirman

If emailing, please let me know whether or not you are posting the same letter.

Change domain to erols.com, if necessary.

[Eric G]

Hi Meirman,

I will check into this too. No in our case (the whole neighbourhood) we all have septic tanks for sewage. There's no road ditch, rather a typical raod storm drain. It doesn't handle sewage. All I'd be doing is redirecting rain/snow water to where the builder should have contoured my land in the first place. (A real learning experience).

There is an ample ditch to the side of my house. The problem is that it's to the back and up hill, so not useful in my case.

You are absolutely right here! :) I've already started looking into renting one.

I'm still wondering how to deal with the part just before the road drain. (Let's assume I can't get that neat tool that Tim had mentioned). The pipe will be a few feet below the surface. Should I try to gradually level it to the surface near the drain?

What would happen to the surrounding ground near the drain, if I filled an area there with gravel instead of channeling it directly to the drain?

TIA Eric

:)

[Tim Meushaw]

That sounds pretty neat. I'll have to look in to that next time I go there.

I'm having a similiar problem to Eric, the original poster. When my wife and I bought our house, the original owner had the sump pump draining into the wash basin in the basement. I thought that was a great idea, but the building inspector and county laws disagreed, so he routed it to go outside the house. RIGHT outside the house. So the water rushes out and goes right back into the sump pump. This causes both a swamp and an infinite loop of water, so the sump pump always runs. We tried getting a flexible drainage hose and leading the water away from the sump pump, but this caused two problems. First, it just makes a swamp where the hose lets out. Second, the drainage in our yard is such that the water goes in to a low point in the neighbor's yard now, giving them a swamp of standing water instead of us. That's also a bad situation. And now the hose has cracked near where it connects to the part of the pipe coming out of the foundation, and so water sprays everywhere, so most of that side of the yard and the fence are now swampy.

So now I'm sick of dealing with this sump pump, and want to do it right once and for all. I believe that involves digging a ditch out to the curb and laying a pipe down about 10" deep so it doesn't freeze in the wintertime.

Some questions I had, though:

1) I figure that I have to have some kind of downward slope going from the sump pump to the curb, then an uphill portion to either break through the curb, or install the thing in Tim's post from Home Depot. But won't water collect in the bottom where the downhill goes uphill? 2) I heard a reference in another news group to "heat tape". Does anyone know what that is and whether I should be using it? 3) Are there any good ways of digging out a trench such that I can cover it back up with the original top layer of grass and not kill all the grass and/or have it wash away in the next rain storm?

I've never done anything like this before, but we had one estimate for the work and they wanted $2500-$3000, which I thought was a bit ridiculous for 30-40' of pipe.

Thanks in advance! Tim

-- Timothy A. Meushaw [e-mail]

[Tim Meushaw]

Maryland, near Washington DC. Usually below freezing a number of days in the winter. I thought I saw recommendations for 6" normally, 10-12" to stop freezing.

Hmm. Not sure there's a good way to put a pump out by the curb. Maybe put some holes in the pipe so any excess water drains out? I'm sure the sump pump can go uphill, at least near the pump (it climbs about 7' now to get out through the foundation), but I was worried that it wouldn't have as much oomph to climb up once it's gone near horizontal for about

30', then upwards again to break out and drain.

Cool. Thanks! Tim

[Ignoramus18786]

That is neat, unless you have a sewage backup into your house that the sump pump is evacuating...

i