Water in Basement.....Help

[scott_vt]

Something is different about these pics, the 1st pic in your post #41 clearly shows the footing in a typical position sticking out from under the wall, but in these new pics I can't see the footing. Is it just below the water? or is this a different wall?

Afternoon Guys,
All I could do today was remove the big chunks of concrete, because the water is just about at the floor level ! But I did get things cleaned up downstairs to a degree, lots of trips out those Bilco doors !

John, thats the same wall its just that all the concrete is wet and you really couldnt clearly see that the water level is just below the top of the footer ! Anyway we are making some progress, its just slow heavy work that I can only do a few hours of it at a time !

John whats the proper term or name for that fabric that I should line the trench with ?

BTW thanks to all who have posted helpful suggestions !

 

[WayneB]

Scotty my heart and thoughts go out to you. Nothing worse than fighting water in the cellar. We have an old house attached to a new house. When we first bought the place the old guy had left an area in the old cellar that he did not put cement floor down. Me thinking how stupid he was went ahead and mixed up cement and finished off the floor. That spring the cellar filled up with about two feet of water what a mess.

If you were closer I would go help you haul stone / cement chips out with you.

Good luck sir.

 

[scott_vt]

Scotty my heart and thoughts go out to you.

If you were closer I would go help you haul stone / cement chips out with you.

Good luck sir.

Evenin Wayne,
Thanks for that kind offer, but I wouldnt wish this type of work on anybody ! Now I see why contractors like John get so much money to do this type of work !

 

[JB4310]

Scotty,
Now that you've assured me that the footing is still there and I look closely I can see it. as far as the filter fabric goes, just look for any light weight non woven filter fabric similar to what landscapers use in flower or stone beds to keep the weeds out, comes in rolls, we cut strips about a foot wide and line the bottom and dirt side of the trench on certain jobs. put it under the first layer of stone that you put down under the pipe.

We are not big proponents of using filter fabric on every job, unless certain conditions are present that we feel the fabric would be more a help than a hindrance, this position does contradict present conventional thinking by engineers, architects and other specifiers and I have had arguments with local building officials (even at my own house) over it's necessity. We have seen on many occasions where a newly installed system has failed due to overzealous use of a filtering medium.
Just briefly, the reason for our position is that the filter fabric can become blocked, doing what it's supposed to be doing, trapping the silt suspended in the moving water, thus preventing the ground water (all or any percentage of it) from making it in to the pipe, leaving a nice clean pipe but a failed system, forcing water back up to the surface of the floor. I tell people it's easy to clear a blockage from inside the pipe but if the outside of the pipe is blocked then the problem area will have to be dug up and redone. We work on houses with an average age of 50 years old, it's common and expectable to find those old clay tile type footing drains that we are working off of, to be up to 75% full of sediment and still be working sufficiently with that top 25% of the pipe open.

By lining only the bottom of the trench, even if the fabric became impermeable the water would push around it and still find the pipe. the same rule applies to using the black corrugated, (slotted) pipe over the white PVC with the holes on the bottom, once that white pipe is 1/3 full of muck it stops accepting water, the black pipe can be 90% full and still work, as the slots go all around it. The white pipe is really designed to "leach" water out of it from a septic system, the top of the pipe is solid to stop soil from getting in.

 

[scott_vt]

Scotty,

By lining only the bottom of the trench, even if the fabric became impermeable the water would push around it and still find the pipe. the same rule applies to using the black corrugated, (slotted) pipe over the white PVC with the holes on the bottom, once that white pipe is 1/3 full of muck it stops accepting water, the black pipe can be 90% full and still work, as the slots go all around it. The white pipe is really designed to "leach" water out of it from a septic system, the top of the pipe is solid to stop soil from getting in.

Afternoon John,
I had bought the white pipe before I had a chance to read about your suggestion on the black corrugated pipe ! Anyway today I went out and bought the proper pipe and I can allways use the white pipe for diverting water away from the house when I get to that point.

I have a day off today so I also bought the concrete drain tile, I bought a 14" by 18" along with a Flotec sump pump rated at 3750 gals per hour, more importantly 2200 gal per hour with a 10' head. Of course they didnt tell me that I needed an inline check valve, so we got to make an extra trip ! I also bought 10' of 1 1/2" pvc pipe and a 90 deg elbow. Im actually making some progress on this project today !

John, I have pulled alot of nice round bank run stones out of the trench, can I use these around my drain tile ??? Seems a shame to waste them ! I installed the drain tile, about 19" deep making the top of the tile about an inch below the top of the footer. Does that sound about right, it was a bear wrestling that thing into my excavated hole that i thought was going to be plenty big enough !

Here are some pictures of my nightmare !

 

[Egon]

Looks like you are almost there!!

Lots of character building.

 

[scott_vt]

Looks like you are almost there!!

Lots of character building.

Evenin Egon,
Thanks I needed some smileys !!!

 

[RobS]

Huge job Scotty, but as I see some of your woodworking equipment in the photos it will be time/effort well spent. Keep going, you're getting very close!

 

[JB4310]

Scotty,
I see you are pumping already, that means the system is working, you can use big stone no problem (up to 2-3") it leaves larger voids which is better, put the bigger stone at the bottom of the trench, you want to keep your pipe up high in the trench to leave the area below it for the fine sand and silt to settle, the top of the pipe should not be lower than the top of the footing, even a little higher is OK, you don't need much stone over the top of the pipe, an inch or two is fine. Be sure not to place the pipe up against the side of the footing, leave at least a couple of inches of stone in between.
John,

 

[JB4310]

Scotty,
After rereading your post I think I misunderstood what you were asking. Now I believe your referring to the sump liner and if it would be ok to fill around that with the large stones, the answer to that is yes. but I see a couple of things that could make hard work for you, We use an 18" dia perforated plastic sump liner, it's basically the same as the 4"ADS corrugated pipe just much larger, we cut 20-24" lengths using a hand saw then cut the pipe opening using a 5" hole saw. we set the top of the liner flush with the surface of the floor and fill around it with the rubble.

You said, and I can see by the picture that you have some kind of a concrete tube or pipe?? not sure how you plan on utilizing that, but it will not be easy to do what I think you need to do, since you already have that heavy liner you can use it, but you should try to configure it like I mentioned, bring the top up to the floor and the hard part, popping a hole in the side to allow the pipe to enter.

You may have your own idea that will work, but man I can imagine it must be a bear handling that thing. I've seen and repaired jobs where they just bring the footing pipe close to a solid liner like that (some of them real clay tile pipe 2' in dia and 3" thick wall!) and let it drain down and into the liner thru the stone fill around and under the liner, it could work like that for many years, but eventually the pipes will have to be extended thru the sides of the pit to drain properly.