Take a shot at this one:

If it rains, why do I get water in my basement? I have a center drain
in the basement which rises during a bad storm. Prev owners rigged a
half-assed solution it seems as a bandaid fix. What they did was route
a 2 inch pvc under the floor which meets this center drain towards the
top. This pvc then slopes a few degrees underground and empties into a
plastic tub or catch in the floor in the other room under the addition.
When I bought this house there was carpeting in the basement which
looked used and no signs of water damage. It was covering this center
drain. Shortly after moving in, a bad rain storm hit and we got 3
inches of water in the basement.

Since I didn't know what I know now, the tub/catch that the water flows
into when a storm causes water to rise high in the center drain, just
sits there. Since the water doesn't have anywhere to go, it came out of
the center drain and ruined our basement. I have since placed a sump
pump into that pit which was convieniently covered up when i purchased
the house. I'm pumping water out a basement window via tubing that came
with the pump. Haven't gotten any water in the basement since I
installed the pump, but I'm forced to leave the door open to accomodate
the hose which is routed out the window and connecting to the pump in
the pit under the addition. The smell is unbearable and is funneled
through the house via the ac and vents.

I've had a few plumbers out there and another is going to come out
today to hopefully tell me what the problem is and why its set up this
way. My question to you fine folks is, is such a setup common? Its not
a true sump setup in the traditional terms. The prev owner never
informed us that a pump was needed back there to remove the water and
there doesnt seem to be any condiut to allow the pump to move the water
out of the house except through my makeshift design which is going out
the window.

I'm a first time home owner and me and my wife feel cheated. We loved
this house which apparently has some drainage problems. Also, the main
big PVC drain appears to have been re-routed after they installed an
addition and is running above ground in the basement. The old way out
is capped off.

Do I have a serious problem here and what should I do? Short of
installing some sort of flood control solution in the front yard,
should I just find a way to pump the water through pvc and out of the
house via a drilled hole through the basement wall? Is this type of
setup even heard of?