In alt.home.repair, on Fri, 25 Dec 2020 17:21:51 -0500, Ralph Mowery
wrote:

In article ,
says...
I woudn't own a house that "needed" a sump pump. New code here
requires all new houses be equipped with one whether required or not.
This house sits high, in sand. Drainage is fefinitely not a problem.
My first houde was the same - high and dry -frainage was never a
problem.

This doesn't really help the OP.


There are lots of homes built where they should not be. Then they flood
out and people cry about it. My first home was near the top of a hill
and did not have a basement so did not have to worry about water.

I bought another house years later. At the back of the property about
100 feet from the house is a stream that is normally about 2 feet wide
and has less than a foot of water in it.

Very much like my situation, except it's 10 feet wide with less than a
foot of water.

Then it is flat for about 30
feet and starts up hill to the house.

Yes, 30 feet.

The house is about 15 or 20 feet
above the stream

Only about 10 feet for me.

so I do not worry about the water getting up that high
and thought the stream would flood the first 20 or so feet so did not
let that be a deal killer.

I didn't even think about the problem. From the day I looked at it
until the first time it flooded! I do have a basement. I get less than
an inch in the basement, but without several boxes that sit on the
floor, it would be over an inch. They soak up a lot. Once they've been
wet, they probalby can't be moved without falling apart, so I don't move
them.

Sure enough it has flooded that 20 feet
about 3 or 4 times each year. It usually goes down in a few hours after
the rain stops.

For me, it's about 1 time a year.

I would think I could predict when it would flood by how much it has
rained and how much it rains, but it doesn't seem to to work that way.

Still, our situations are very similar.

Sometimes the code is written with things that many do not need, but
just a blanket code.

My neighbors with basements that are not below grade (because the front
of the house is on a hill but not the back, don't have sump pumps.

But mine doesn't flood because the sump pump is not good. That's only
happened once in 37 years.

It's because the stream overflows the manhole of the sewer that was laid
parallel to the stream. They should have made it higher. And it backs
up through the laundry sink. It took me a few times to learn how to
plug the sink so the water backing up would not unplug it.

Of the 100 houses in my n'hood, 4 of us face this issue, and every time
I get a new neighbor in those 4, I warn them. But they usually don't
take it seriously until the first flood.

I love living next to the stream, despite this problem.

There is an island in it that I tried to name after myself in google
maps, but they wanted supporting information. Drat.