Water Flow Under Basenment Floor

jeff007

Hello I have a continuios flow under my house i have a sump pump that pushes out 500 gallons a water every 10 minutes. I have been told I have a under ground stream under my foundation it never gets wet in basement unless i lose power. is there any thing i can do to help this when we bought the house they said it had a french drain system in it! it all connects to the sump pump area! is there any relief other then putting a full time generator in! THANKS

LawnGuyLandSparky

You cannot change the laws of physics. Move.

RippySkippy

Trench the footing drain out to either daylight or the nearest drainage ditch. I had to do the same in my house, going on 2 years of non-stop flow.

Bondo

Ayuh,....

The Only Cure is to head it off, Before it enters the cellar, By whatever means it Takes....

Marlin

I'll never understand why people insist on building houses where they should not be built.

wsuswim147

If you wanted to get really fancy, setting up a groundwater dewatering system would be the way to go. These systems involve determing the direction and volume of groundwater flow and then installing 1 or 2 groundwater wells with dewatering pumps in the upstream direction. Is the house recently built? These systems can be rather expensive and I have seen instances where the homeowner sued the builder for the cost of installing such a system.

Chris Johnson

First thing you do is purchase a a double sump pump with a battery backup and a trinkle charge for the battery and have that in place then look at the other methods

The basement should have never been put in to begin with, now you have to deal with it.

By the way a french drain does not go to the sump pit in the basement, the sump pit should be the backup for the french drain which should be draining elsewhere on the property such as an underground pit. I used to build in areas and we would have the excavator dig a pit as deep as he could and install the weeping tile down there and fill with 3/4 clear stone, that pipe was connected to the weeping tile around the house.

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Chris

RippySkippy

Easy there Marlin, what you say isn't always so easy. Sometimes we have to deal with what we have to work with. My wife and I built a house on the highest spot in the middle of a field that's relatively flat, not what I'd call hilly, but by no means perfectly flat. The perc test came back good so the surface water issues were ok.

We dug the basement hole and the water immediately started coming in. We didn't think too much of it...but it never stopped and didn't get any deeper than about 4". Obviously we made a pond in the middle of the natural sub surface water water flow. You could go to the edge of the hole an watch the water percolate up from below, almost like it was spring fed. There were no surface visual indicators that would indicate we had sub-surface water when we started.

Immediately we put in 4" of clean 2" stone, drain tile in the middle of the basement floor to relieve any hydraulic pressure in the center of the slab, a 4" pvc tile tied into the form-a-drain that went 350' to daylight. That tile has NEVER stopped running in almost 2 years. Would a sump pump handle the water sure...but I didn't want a lifetime of worry every time the electricity blinked. Daylight and gravity can be your friends.

awagner

I have had similar running water with same information from seller on french drain - the water has not stopped via sump pump. Thinking of maybe doing a well to use water for lawn et el and not pay for water and also putting a gas generator. Would like to finish basement but not sure - any thoughts ? - let me know what you do to make it better and will do same - later.

jogr

Slight detour here along the lines of making lemonade when life hands you lemons. If you're in the situation of pumping a never ending stream of ground water it would seem like you have the perfect setup for geothermal heating/cooling. You are already set up with the ground water supply, pump and method of discharge. Just bypass the water through your geoheatpump and at least save some heating/cooling costs.