Our sump runs all the time in the basement. The result is that we
always have soggy places in our yard where we put the outlet tube.
Compounding this is the fact that the water table seems to be high
here, so low places on our property are prone to being soggy anyway,
after rains and such. We live in a rural area with no city service
such as storm drains.

Over the summer, we found some old field tile in the yard and it seemed
to be "working" in that I could stick the garden hose in there and it
would seemingly take as much as I could dump in. We decided to tie the
sump outlet into this tile, and ran it through some perforated tile
along the way thinking that we could maybe dry up the yard a little
while we're at it.

It seemed to be working until recently (spring) when the perforated
section began overflowing and causing water to pool up above where it
is. We have a lot of snow that is melting right now. The hole where
we dug down to the tile is still open since we never got around to
filling it, and it is full of water all the way up to about 4-6" below
the surface of the yard. I dug another small hole nearby, and it fills
in with water at that depth too. It seems as though the whole water
table is barely below the surface of the yard.

I have two questions after all that. How the heck might we get rid of
all this water? And second, how can our septic tank still be
functional with the water so high? Could it be that in clay soil, the
water level can be significantly different within a few hundred feet?

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