In alt.home.repair on Fri, 22 Jul 2005 09:03:11 -0400 "CL (dnoyeB)
Gilbert" posted:

A failing sump pump is not necessarily your biggest risk.
...

Despite the fact that the stream has risen to two feet from my fence,
to a place which is less than 30 feet from my basement and probably 4
feet above my basement floor, and despite the fact that water just
pours into the sump though both pipes that surround the base of the
foundation, from both directions, and my sump pump often runs a lot, I

FTR, townhouse, end of group. One perforated corrugated 6 inch black
plastic pipe goes around the side and rear of the house, and the other
one only the front of the house, 90% of which has the "patio" and
stoop in front of it. That only leaves a little to enter though that
pipe, but I do see some.

pumping time dropped by about 80 percent. Now, light rains never cause
the pump to go on. If I went up another inch it would drop another 10
or 15 percent, and I think if I went up to 5 inches below the floor it
would never run at all. Water would never get higher than that.


I have a stream that runs next to my house as well. Turns into a kind
of swamp further toward the end of my property.

I can believe that. Try not to mow the lawn then. The city map
of my parents' neighborhood showed a stream 3 doors from our house,
but they just a built a regular house there. His back yard was like a
swamp when it rained, and a 10 foot by 8 foot part of our yard was
too, in the spring. The self-propelled lawnmower left ruts it the
yard. Hilarious.

My house was built where an auto junk yard had been, and they built up
some lots with fill. Probably my little lot the most. The stream is
about 8 feet wide by 6 inches deep most of the time, but when it rains
enough it can go to 30 feet wide by 10 feet deep in 10 hours. I
should try white water canoeing.

The fact that the pump runs a lot does not mean that if you turned off
the pump the basement would flood. You have to check. And you have
to do so when all the conditions are right for flooding to occur.
Start when one condition is right, when it's raining heavily.

If you already own the house, I would go down there during the
heaviest storms, and also the longest periods of rain, and when the
soil outside the house is the most drenched, and watch what happens
when you loosen the collar, and let the float rise all the way up
without turning on the pump. See how close to the floor it gets.
...
Well this depends. I can unplug my sump now and the water will raise
quickly to the level of the drain tiles and slow down while the tiles
are backfilling with water. So you have to wait a considerable time for
those tiles to fill up. Then since you have previously lowered the
ground water level around yoru house by sumping, you will have to wait

I didn't think that was much of a factor, but I guess I didn't pay
attention.

till the ground water level raises as well.

I'll try all this, but it will have to wait until there is a lot more
rain.

So if you unplug the pump and it only raises to 6" from the top of the
pit, you still have to wait a few days to know for sure if this level is
settled. And yes you also need to know what will happen to it in a rain
storm.

Right. Two different things, or three if you count long medium rains
and drenching rains of whatever length.

on. Even now, there is the chance the sink will fall off the wall the
next time water pressure is pushing up on the cork. Hmmm. I'm not
sure if that would matter??????, but I have to put legs under the sink
anyhow, for when it falls off the wall from the weight of the water.


I wouldnt expect this to be common.

That's one reason I haven't put the legs on yet. I noticed during the
last flood, when I was teaching my neighbors how to siphon out the
sink, that one sink had legs added. I should ask them why, but they
probably won't know.

You should install a backflow valve
in your main sewer if this is the case.

An anti-backflow valve? I don't think I need that because I don't
think the level has ever gotten more than 4 feet above the basement
floor, and the main drain is not in a wall and has never shown any
leakage.

I do have it in the sink drain, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't work
well. I wish I could have tested when new, but since then, I've used
my washer a lot and it doesn't have a lint trap. Rather the manual
says it cuts the lint up into little pieces. I've used a variety of
things to catch the little pieces before they go down the drain, but
I'm pretty sure enough has gotten down that the valve won't shut well
anymore. I mean, I took out the piece of wood twice when the water
outside was high enough and water started gushing up through the
drain.

Plastic drain pipe, and all I could find was a flapper valve. Is
there a better, less cloggable valve?

Also I am surprised that you do
not have any floor drains. Those would let out the water before it
reached the level of the sink.

Wait a second. No leak has ever gotten more than an eigth of an inch
on the floor, and only part of the floor at that. Mostly that damages
cardboard boxes and I have to find new ones to put my short scrap
lumber in, etc. Only one leak has ever made it out of the laundry
room to the "club room" (where the rug soaked up a lot, and where
about 6 vinyl tiles came unglued, plus 6 edge pieces along one wall.

When the stream floods and the sink overflows, it is only after it
reaches and surpasses the top of the sink that any water gets on the
floor.

But the sink also backed up when a grease log clogged the local sewer...

But there are more ways to flood, all of which have affected me.

Forgetting that the basement sink has a stopper in it, with a piece of
wood jambed against the shelf, and then doing the laundry. I've only
done that once.
...
Turn off the water lines to your washing machine whenever you unload
the washer, or use steel covered hoses, or maybe even both. ...

Interesting. They told me when I put in my washer to use the metal
hoses since they dont break as often as the rubber ones which must be
widespread. Also sounds like you could use a watter hammer arrester?

I had to put two in after I got the metal hoses, because otherwise the
pipes banged. Little things from home Depot, worked fine.

Don't use vinyl tubing to your humidifier or refrigerator ice maker
(or anything else if there are other things). Use copper, and don't
fold it when you install it.

I loop the copper hose like a spring.

Good. BTW, although not much water got on the floor, when the
humidifier tube started to spray, it did so right over my file
cabinet. And the drawer was open. The one open drawer may have
funnelled some water to the closed drawer beneath it. This is the
basement file cabinet with tourist and technical information (and
springs and chains and bottle brushes in the bottom drawer. Some of
that may have gotten rusty, but no big deal). The glossy tourist
stuff tended to stick together and some woudln't unstick later. (I
should have done it before they dried (no, I remember. I couldn't
because then the pages would just fall apart), it was only tourist
stuff.) The unglossy stuff dried with no effort from me but still
looks a little more raggedy than it used to. No big deal, all of
this, but I was depressed about it at the time. I seemed more into
collecting tourist information than actually touring. That took too
much time, and for foreign locations, money.

Put your water heater in a plastic tray, with the drain routed to

Cut holes in the lip of the sump. My plastic lip is at least 3/8 inch
high, and though it's pretty, afaict there is no need for any lip

Sometimes they try to seal the sump pit to keep out Radon.

Not here because the lid for the sump has a 60 square inch section
missing that the output pipe and the float mechanism go through. (I
did check for radon once and was way below the danger level.)

In my location, I can't put a toilet in the basement, because there is
no way to plug it, even though the rough-in is there.

What do you mean by "plug it?" I have just installed a pipe in my
basement floor and will soon install the toilet. Should I be concerned?

Only if your sewer drain backs up more than you can tolerate. That's
happened to me four or five times in 22 years and would have another 5
to 15 times if I weren't able to plug the basement sink.** The top of
the toilet bowl would be barely higher than the bottom of my sink, let
alone the top of the sink. (That might not make any difference in
frequency, because it is only when the stream rises higher than the
manholes that there is flooding. Then it floods the sink and would
flood the toilet too. But I can't plug the toilet. Well maybe I
could, but then every time I wanted to use the toilet, I'd have to
take out the plug, use it, and put the plug back. Easier to go
upstairs.

**BTW, the water that comes out is from the *sewage* pipe, and does
seem to have solid matter in it. Yet, thank goodness, it has never
smelled bad while the floor was wet or afterwards, at least to my
enfeebled nose. I really don't think there has been any smell. Of
course it is mixed with lots of water from the kitchen and bathroom
sinks sinks, plus this only happens when the stream overflows the
sewer, and there must be enormous amounts of stream water diluting the
sewage. OTOH, I see lots of solid matter. Ot3H, this is not from a
septic tank. It's all "fresh". The stream only goes 3 or 4 miles
upsteam from me (and after that it's too tiny to be a stream, to be
anything), and I'm pretty sure the sewer goes no more. How fast would
sewage run in a sewer?? At least 5 miles an hour??? So nothing is
more than an hour old (not counting the time it spend inside people.)

I've thought about putting a tray underneathe the sink, with a pipe to
the sump, or cutting a channel in the basement floor. But my basement
is crowded and they're on opposite sides of the room. If I were
building a house, I would consider putting them next to each other
with the floor sloped to

Leads me to believe you dont have any floor drains.

I don't. I guess I could manually or jack hammer the floor (would
that crack it all the way through?), slope the replacement floor under
the sink, and maybe where the toilet goes, so that it goes to a drain
(or two) under the sink and naar the toilet and route the pipe to the
sump.


BTW, years ago I called the dept of sanitation and asked them to put
waterproof manhole covers in a couple of the manholes. Somone had told
me about them. He said it wouldn't help but said he would do it if I
wanted him to. I'm always optimistic. They did. I don't think it
helped. But now I'm not sure if I should have picked the manhole very
near me, the ones downstream, or the ones upstreeam. ???



Meirman
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