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Water in Basement under slabFrom: jamdj1@aol.com
Category: Drainage/Waterproofing
Remote Name: 172.157.217.249
Date: 14 May 2004
Time: 11:47 PM
CommentsMy question is about trying to stop water from coming into my basement and having a sump pump running all the time.
Here's my story. My wife and I built a modular home and I acted as the GC. When I started this project, I told the excavator that I hired a high priorty of mine was that I don't have to use a sump pump running all the time and would only need it for the worst conditions.
To make a VERY LONG story short, he dug too deep and my footing is right in the water table.
( he kept telling me it was ground water and not to worry...and of course I believed him because he was the "expert") My sump pump runs about every 3 minutes. My lot is relatively flat and I do not know what to do. My footing is 5 feet down. I have about 4 ft where I could dig down (behind my house) and could daylight a drain on the other side of my lot ( about 400 ft away). My question is if I did some type of a curtain drain would this help even though I could not get down all the way to the water table ? The water is primarly coming from the back of the house. If I dug a trench 5 or 6 ft deep, filled it with 1 or 2 ft of stone from the bottom, then put my perferated pipe about a 4 ft, then the rest with stone, would the hydrostatic pressure push up through the stone because that is the path of least resistance? Would this help?
My other options that I have thought of would be to put a pipe under a corner of the footing and have it run "down hill" under ground into a dry well and pump it out from there. Is this something that can be done and what would I use? If it is possible, could a pump be set (float) to run maybe to kick on every hr instead of every 3 minutes like my sump pump?
My main goal is to stop as much as possible water from going under my basement, if I can't do that.....I would rather have it pump out from an outside source before it reached the level of my footing and into my basement. It sounds like someone taking a non stop leak in my basement. Right now my first and only line of defense is my sump pump. I just purchased a battery back up system.
To give you an idea how badly my excavator screwed up he installed my septic to low ( he didnt read the plans I had givin him from the engineer) and the whole thing had to be torn out, and I had to bring 15 truck loads of sand
(20 tons each) to raise it and the leach fields. if he had even to bother to read them, from the septic plans alone he would have known not to dig as deep as he did. Another hole had to be put in my foundation. He admitted and I quote, " I f*****d up. Thanks to him my backyard is now a sandy beach and my grade is only 6 inches from the bottom of my siding. Not to mention I can forget about having a deck.
What do I do ?
I know I can't do an exterior perimiter drain because the footing is 5 ft down and I can only go down as far as 4 ft where I can daylight it to.
PLEASE HELP........ANY IDEAS ADVICE.....NO MATTER HOW EXTREME !!
signed,
BEYOND FRUSTRATED in Upstate New York
PS.....and this was a short version of what has happened........there is a lot more to this story !
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