Pumping a lot of water from basement sump what to do with it? Irrigation?

[MossRoad]

I think the attention you're getting is due to that huge volume of water each and every day. As I mentioned, that's two large above ground pools worth every day! I'd have to run our 4" well 34 hours to fill that. Kinda mind-numbing for many of us. :laughing:

 

[MechE1]

As far as set up for the pumps. I have two 3/4HP pumps. One stacked 2" higher than the other. Both have their own check valves. Wyed above the valves to a single line. THEN, I split the lines in two. Another wye. Ball valves on each wye. 1 line runs to the front road ditch, always open. The other line (alwasy closed) runs to the back of the house to a valve box and I have a banjo fitting so I can hook up a lay-flat line. I've used it to assist in filling a pool (who mentioned that?). The sump was cast into the concrete floor. The hole size is 24" square and about 16 inches deep. Each line has a union fitting so I can swap out the pump in a hurry without cutting pipe. As mentioned before, no battery back up. Seems pointless, but I've never ran the calcs. I'm guessing I'd get about an hour out of each battery. Maybe 2 max. Emergency generator has been used a half dozen times to prevent flooding. Natural gas, so no worry about refilling tank. Just have to be here when it's needed. Standby genset would be ideal, but cost is high. It's in the "wish list". I've learned that during normal times, I have almost exactly 2 hours before the water breaches the top of the sump. The pump runs for a good long time when this happens. The footprint of the basement is about 1600ftsq and around 330 linear ft. I can only assume that the whole area below the floor is getting saturated during these times.

Most of the time when the power goes out here, it is back on before that 2 hour window. I guess I must be pretty lucky/good with it as I've never had a flood b/c of power loss.

I swap pump positions on occasion to make sure they are both used. I keep an additional pump on hand, but since doing so, have never had the need to use it.

 

[Fuddy1952]

Our well...when I bought this place 40 years ago I wired a light socket mounted on outside of wellhouse, side facing house.
I put a 40 watt purple bulb in it, wired across two legs of the 240v which feeds submersible pump.
I can see that light letting me know pump is running even way down driveway. Over the years it's helped me find leaks, i.e., light should not be on with no one using water.
That may help you.
Testing water would be good for comparison. I'd want to know what it is.
How far are you from a neighbor's well, a spring, etc. (another water source).
Is it possible your well casing has a crack in it?
It's a really bizarre problem.

 

[MossRoad]

Our well...when I bought this place 40 years ago I wired a light socket mounted on outside of wellhouse, side facing house.
I put a 40 watt purple bulb in it, wired across two legs of the 240v which feeds submersible pump.
I can see that light letting me know pump is running even way down driveway. Over the years it's helped me find leaks, i.e., light should not be on with no one using water.
That may help you.
Testing water would be good for comparison. I'd want to know what it is.
How far are you from a neighbor's well, a spring, etc. (another water source).
Is it possible your well casing has a crack in it?
It's a really bizarre problem.

He's got a high water table. That's it.

 

[Fallon]

I assume testing the water would be related to seeing if there was chlorine in the ground water indicating a broken pipe from city pipes.

 

[rScotty]

I'd run the sump pump into a known sized container and time how long it takes to fill it up, or how much came out during the time the pump runs. Then multiply that by how many run times per hour, multiply by 24 and there's your guesstimate.

MossRoad, that's what I would do as well.....time how long the pump takes to fill a 5 gallon bucket.... or a 20 gallon trash can. The original numbers don't make sense to me. It seems like more water than a couple of 110 volt pumps can move.

We had a similar problem with ground water after a flood here changed the local ground water. We ended up running three pumps pretty much continuously during the warm months for several years. Sump pumps wear pretty quickly running that much & we ended up with a collection of pumps and rebuilding parts - mostly float switches. PM me if you want recommendations on 110 volt sump pumps!

After a few years we got ahead on other items of flood repair, and also tired or rebuilding pumps..... so I surveyed the available slope very carefully and then built a few hundred feet of French-drains that connect together to drain into a ditch that goes to a creek a quarter mile away. The goal was to intercept the water coming onto the property and use gravity instead of pumps to divert it elswhere.

This turned out to be a kind of average normal job after all the planning was done, although we couldn't have done it without the little Kubota backhoe. The result was that it works perfectly and has solved our groundwater problem. Now it is all drained away silently by gravity.

The start of the Fench drain around one side of the property consists of 4" perf pipe surrounded by two feet of gravel all wrapped in geotextile and buried at a depth of six feet. As the drain line progresses, the various sections of drain combine and get bigger until the last 75 feet is a 30" diameter concrete and steel pipe that flows into the ditch .... which then flows to the creek. There wasn't much slope to work with, so nowhere does the drainage slope exceed one and one half degrees. That small of a slope made it necessary to lay the drains very accurately & I bought a special "slope level" for the purpose. (Amazon).

I didn't know if the design would be a success or not, so we kept the 3 automatic sump pumps (i/2 hp high volume low pressure type) in place as a backup, The French drain is working so well that the pumps haven't run in 2 years.
rScotty

 

[MossRoad]

If the OP could determine if the aquifer is flowing in a specific direction, he might be able to intercept it upstream of his house and divert it. However, if it's like the area I live in, there's just water everywhere. It's about impossible to divert. All you can do is build a boat of a basement so the house floats, or like they do out on the flats of the former Grand Kankakee Marsh is built the house higher above the watershed and then mound dirt up around the basement walls that are sticking out of the ground 4-5'.

 

[bradm64]

As far as set up for the pumps. I have two 3/4HP pumps. One stacked 2" higher than the other. Both have their own check valves. Wyed above the valves to a single line. THEN, I split the lines in two. Another wye. Ball valves on each wye. 1 line runs to the front road ditch, always open. The other line (alwasy closed) runs to the back of the house to a valve box and I have a banjo fitting so I can hook up a lay-flat line. I've used it to assist in filling a pool (who mentioned that?). The sump was cast into the concrete floor. The hole size is 24" square and about 16 inches deep. Each line has a union fitting so I can swap out the pump in a hurry without cutting pipe. As mentioned before, no battery back up. Seems pointless, but I've never ran the calcs. I'm guessing I'd get about an hour out of each battery. Maybe 2 max. Emergency generator has been used a half dozen times to prevent flooding. Natural gas, so no worry about refilling tank. Just have to be here when it's needed. Standby genset would be ideal, but cost is high. It's in the "wish list". I've learned that during normal times, I have almost exactly 2 hours before the water breaches the top of the sump. The pump runs for a good long time when this happens. The footprint of the basement is about 1600ftsq and around 330 linear ft. I can only assume that the whole area below the floor is getting saturated during these times.

Most of the time when the power goes out here, it is back on before that 2 hour window. I guess I must be pretty lucky/good with it as I've never had a flood b/c of power loss.

I swap pump positions on occasion to make sure they are both used. I keep an additional pump on hand, but since doing so, have never had the need to use it.

Did I understand it takes about 2 hours for sump to fill when power out? If I did not interpret that correctly the following is not relevant.

If so a 2 foot by 2 foot sump 16 inches deep would be a little less than 6 cubic feet of water. At 7.48 gallons per cubic foot would be around 45 gallons in 2 hours. Would be 20 or so gallons per hour instead of per minute. Still a lot but more manageable than 25000 per day.

Maybe install a well outside the house to draw down water table to at least keep water out of house?

 

[Fuddy1952]

If the water table is high, there's no way I'd want a basement. Instead I'd do like they build in South Carolina (for example), houses on stilts.
I just don't see how even with extensive work, trenching, waterproofing, diverting you could ever have a dry basement. All that water has to go somewhere.

 

[Scrambler82]

Me again, we keep talking about how much water, two things pop up, one being he has water, no matter how much it is there is water, and two is he need to determine the source.

The has had a water problem for 14 years, doesn't seem to bother him much or something would have been done a long time back.
OP... you said you have flooded three time, once because of electric failure, it may just be me, BUT if you do have another flood for what ever reason, and you aren't there, I'm thinking at the rate of water you are talking, the damage level I can't even imagine.

Why hasn't something been done before this ?

Have you taking any time to determine where the water is coming from, outside, inside, spring under the house, etc ?

Do you have City/Town Water or a well ?

OP, Have you any ideas as to what is the problem ?

I did like the idea of maybe "City/Town Water Pipe may be broken" but I am thinking the City people would have had a problem by now... !

Good Luck, fins the source !