I have a house built in 1965. The basement is not finished but when I moved in I did dryloked it and repainted the walls. When we get big rain storms of 2inches plus, I get water that comes in where the floor meets the wall. Mainly on the street side of the house, but it does come in on the west side and north side some as well. I am going to work on the landscaping and drainage of the downspouts some more this summer. All the down spouts are atleast 4ft away from the house and run away from the house. (I will post pics when I get home from work.) Question is.....will a sump pump work in the one corner of the house w/o putting in a french drain? I was told by a couple people who have done this that they dug down about 2-3 feet. Put a 5 gallon bucket in the hole that had holes in it. Put a sump pump in the bucket and it fixed their issue. Does it keep the water table low enough by doing this? They also said to do this in the lowest corner of the home but not sure how to figure that out. I have no interest in finishing the basement but I do have a pool table and huge are rug down there and a work bench area and laundry. I had to suck up water 4 times last year because it was such a wet year. I will take pics when I get home. Hope someone can share some ideas.

We bought a repo that a garage that has been closed in, floor joists, sub floor, the whole deal. Everything is finished upstairs now, but the crawl space between the old garage concrete and floor joists isn't insulated. It's not a tall enough space for me to fit in and there's no vapor barrier down. Any ideas what to do to get insulation and vapor barrier in. I can really feel the temp difference on the floors above.