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

[Fuddy1952]

I know this sounds stupid, but it would seem to me the basement would be unusable. How difficult would it be to fill it in?

 

[rScotty]

Hey, I agree that it's not good to build a house with a basement in a high water table. However, that's the reality the OP has to deal with. He also has mentioned several times he has no slope. Flat flat flat property. French drains would do nothing for him.

MossRoad, I think you missed some of the postings and came to the wrong conclusion. The OP never said he has no slope; and he did not say that his land was completely flat.

What he said back in post #60 was, "The whole property drops 26 inches over 330ft back to front. Ditch is about 20-ish inches deep from grade".

That's not much, but it is enough to drain if the builder is careful and makes provision for keeping it cleared out. Drainage will happen even on a slope that small, but the flow rate won't be high enough to self-clean.
rScotty

 

[MossRoad]

MossRoad, I think you missed some of the postings and came to the wrong conclusion. The OP never said he has no slope; and he did not say that his land was completely flat.

What he said back in post #60 was, "The whole property drops 26 inches over 330ft back to front. Ditch is about 20-ish inches deep from grade".

That's not much, but it is enough to drain if the builder is careful and makes provision for keeping it cleared out. Drainage will happen even on a slope that small, but the flow rate won't be high enough to self-clean.
rScotty

It's not surface water that's his problem. The entire ground is completely full of water just below his surface. No french drain is going to divert a high water table 8' down to the bottom of his basement footer with only 26" of slope in 300'.

 

[Scrambler82]

If Mech1 puts in a drainage trench across the back of his house, from higher to lower on the property, deep enough to be lower than the floor of his basement, stone and pipe with cover blockage for material intervention, why wouldn't that take most of the water away... ? i.e. path of least resistance !

I had a similar water problem, but not as bad as Mech1's, during the spring thaws each year my crawl space 20 x 50 x 4 feet deep, would almost fill with water. Thanks to only the fact that one end was higher, where my furnace was, did I not lose the furnace, hot water heater and maybe my fuel tanks. I couldn't find the problem and pumped every spring with a small sump pump took enough away to save the important stuff but it was getting musty smelling.
I already had enough stone under the house and sides with piping, so I decided maybe it was the gutters, so I started digging the furthest away point, dug approximately two to three feet where I could, and WHAM-BAN, running water.
I am at 70 feet above sea level, on a slight high point of a downward hill with a very deep gorge on the back side of my house and enough stone under the house and floor to sink a battle ship, and I was confused as to how water could flow from the gorge side at three feet down... but it seem that it might be the problem.
I dug to three + feet, did the stone and pipe thing, covered it and Thank you God, no more water.
Even though the water flowed in that ares for who know how long and under my house for at least 10 years causing me a PITA situation, it was gone, and a little too easy but it is what it is.

So I keep saying the same thing, find the source/flow of the water, if you can dig a trench deep enough and see the water flow, then you should be able to divert some of it, maybe all of it.
Because of the volume of water being tossed around on this thread, I am thinking it may take more than what I did but it is possible to divert Mother Nature.

From the pictures, the backside of the house has higher land than the front or side, the backside needs to be excavated and determine what is going on. If the water IS coming UP instead of from the side, yes there is an even bigger problem but if you can get flow in a trench then you can do something about it.

The idea of filling in the basement... interesting, a little off the wall, but a lot of crushed stone, and a thick concrete cap, with pipes taking the overflow out one side to a tank system, where you can pump water for whatever you want... and if there is enough... you can even sell it until the owner of the Pond that is draining through your yard complains he isn't getting his share... LoL !

Mech1, Good Luck, this is a good hydraulics problem, another idea maybe but just thinking out loud, a local University can help, some school are always looking for a problem to solve.

 

[CincyFlyer]

It's not surface water that's his problem. The entire ground is completely full of water just below his surface. No french drain is going to divert a high water table 8' down to the bottom of his basement footer with only 26" of slope in 300'.

Yep. Where I live, you can hit water down a couple of feet most of the year! (Makes putting in decorative ponds a pain.)

 

[MossRoad]

If Mech1 puts in a drainage trench across the back of his house, from higher to lower on the property, deep enough to be lower than the floor of his basement, stone and pipe with cover blockage for material intervention, why wouldn't that take most of the water away... ? i.e. path of least resistance !
....

Because most likely it would be like putting a wall up in part of a lake. The water is everywhere. It's like that here in many places. Dig 3-4' down and you hit water. For miles and miles, all the way to the Indiana/Illinois border 80 miles away.

 

[rScotty]

You don't need to go all the way to the Indiana border. Just to somewhere that is lower than the start of the drainage trench..... and it doesn't have to be lower by much.

Most ground can be drained if you really want to. It does often require a ditch or underground drain across neighboring land to do so, but it help them too.

Drainage & irrigation ditches are important enough west of the Mississippi that there is a whole special section of water law. I don't know about the water laws east of the Mississippi - but the science of drainage still works the same.
rScotty

 

[MossRoad]

You don't need to go all the way to the Indiana border. Just to somewhere that is lower than the start of the drainage trench..... and it doesn't have to be lower by much.

Most ground can be drained if you really want to. It does often require a ditch or underground drain across neighboring land to do so, but it help them too.

Drainage & irrigation ditches are important enough west of the Mississippi that there is a whole special section of water law. I don't know about the water laws east of the Mississippi - but the science of drainage still works the same.
rScotty

You just don't seem to understand that if there's no place for the water to go, you can't drain it. It's that flat. They tried it with the grand kankakee marsh. It's been over a hundred years and the ground water is still 3-4' below the surface. There's only an 11' drop in elevation from the middle of Indiana to Kankakee, Illinois. You can't put basements on the flats. Not possible.

 

[herm0016]

about that pond....

my parents have a pond on their property and someone ran a drain off to the back, enough slope where they are, so no problem. this spring fed pond stay at the same level all the time? could that pipe or a pipe coming onto your property be from that pond? the water would have to go somewhere. the pond, if spring fed, should be filling up your area until it drains to a sea somewhere.

 

[Fuddy1952]

If Mech1 puts in a drainage trench across the back of his house, from higher to lower on the property, deep enough to be lower than the floor of his basement, stone and pipe with cover blockage for material intervention, why wouldn't that take most of the water away... ? i.e. path of least resistance !

I had a similar water problem, but not as bad as Mech1's, during the spring thaws each year my crawl space 20 x 50 x 4 feet deep, would almost fill with water. Thanks to only the fact that one end was higher, where my furnace was, did I not lose the furnace, hot water heater and maybe my fuel tanks. I couldn't find the problem and pumped every spring with a small sump pump took enough away to save the important stuff but it was getting musty smelling.
I already had enough stone under the house and sides with piping, so I decided maybe it was the gutters, so I started digging the furthest away point, dug approximately two to three feet where I could, and WHAM-BAN, running water.
I am at 70 feet above sea level, on a slight high point of a downward hill with a very deep gorge on the back side of my house and enough stone under the house and floor to sink a battle ship, and I was confused as to how water could flow from the gorge side at three feet down... but it seem that it might be the problem.
I dug to three + feet, did the stone and pipe thing, covered it and Thank you God, no more water.
Even though the water flowed in that ares for who know how long and under my house for at least 10 years causing me a PITA situation, it was gone, and a little too easy but it is what it is.

So I keep saying the same thing, find the source/flow of the water, if you can dig a trench deep enough and see the water flow, then you should be able to divert some of it, maybe all of it.
Because of the volume of water being tossed around on this thread, I am thinking it may take more than what I did but it is possible to divert Mother Nature.

From the pictures, the backside of the house has higher land than the front or side, the backside needs to be excavated and determine what is going on. If the water IS coming UP instead of from the side, yes there is an even bigger problem but if you can get flow in a trench then you can do something about it.

The idea of filling in the basement... interesting, a little off the wall, but a lot of crushed stone, and a thick concrete cap, with pipes taking the overflow out one side to a tank system, where you can pump water for whatever you want... and if there is enough... you can even sell it until the owner of the Pond that is draining through your yard complains he isn't getting his share... LoL !

Mech1, Good Luck, this is a good hydraulics problem, another idea maybe but just thinking out loud, a local University can help, some school are always looking for a problem to solve.

That's what I was thinking..."The idea of filling in the basement... interesting, a little off the wall, but a lot of crushed stone, and a thick concrete cap"
Curious what's in the basement? Problematic if laundry, furnace, etc. That would mean another, maybe small utility room addition.
I'm just thinking out loud if it were me, what I'd do.
Mom's house is concrete block on a concrete slab, Dad and Grandfather built in 1949. Never a problem.
Grandparents next door has basement, always had problems and it's on top of hill. Lots of mold/mildew.
In-laws house (wife sold it) had a half basement, on a hill but spring in back yard. Always had problems and mold.
That's why I bought my house 40 years ago, cinder block on slab, one section a crawl space but no problems.
What's interesting is we have friends who live out west in the desert...like 1" rain annually. I asked about a basement...they asked what is that!?! A basement in desert would be ideal.