Tough question
Situation: During rare heavy rains, ground water fills basement window wells and pours into basement.
Dropping sump pump into a sump bucket set in well stops problem.
However, one window well is inaccessible due to construction built over it.
Question: Will creating an equal "well" (no window) against the foundation within eight (8) feet of existing window well draw the ground water to migrate there as the water is pumped out of the "new" well?
Asked another way - will the lower static pressure in the "new" well caused by pumping it out prevent the ground water from filling the existing window well? "

 

That's impossible to predict from long distance.
I assume the water you are dealing with is from the ground and not run off from the roof directly into the wells.
Is there any way to direct this water away from the house over the surface, landscaping?

Bud

 

We used to install surface collectors (fancy name for a drain) & drywells, to solve that problem. Basically, the drain is installed at the bottom of the window well, with a pipe that takes the water to a drywell, a few feet away.

 

To support ground water vs surface run-off, a second widow well at the top of a slope away from the house also floods and it had been black-topped over so no chance of surface or roof run-off. Again, the window well to be solved has been built over so digging it deeper or any work on it is out.
If it were possible to reach it, we'd install a porous well bucket then drop a pump when needed.
The question is how to relieve that window flooding without direct access to the window well. Since digging not feasible we considering a second "new" well built nearby to draw groundwater. But will it work?

 

Can you post some pics? That might help.

 

These are standard ground level cellar casement windows with the standard
below ground half-round metal retainer - we've all seen them.

 

I don't have any more suggestions, if no modifications can be done, to the existing window well. Maybe someone else has another idea.

 

A picture of my window wells is right below on this page (with a plastic cover).
One of my wells is covered by construction and the other is covered in black-top.
Also, my town prohibits new sump wells and pumps in the basement so you can see why using the outside window wells with pumps might be an alternative

 

it doesn't stop it but resolves it instead,,, any time you can collect water & discharge it before it hits the footer is a good thing

 

A pump is the last resort. It's constant maintenance at a constant cost.

 

The pump would be a standard automatic portable sump pump - not installed. As the water builds up in the window well, an automatic sump pump connected to a hose is lowered into the well. As the water rises the pump turns on and lowers the water to keep it below the basement window casement preventing (or limiting) cellar flooding. When the flooding stops, the pump & hose is then lifted out and the window well is covered.
Keeping the water out is better than mopping up a wet cellar.
Has nobody ever tried this?

 

Ive done just that, when I realized that one of my window wells was filling with water. I *do* have outside access to it, and I did dig down as far as I could and backfilled with gravel (instead of the packed down dirt that was already there). Eventually the gravel must have settled into itself, because after a few years the well started to fill up on its own.

Ive since had a full interior french drain installed with a window well drain plumbed into it. But the utility pump with float switch was something I used until we got the drainage system. It could even be a semi-permanent installation....with a float switch set to the correct level, just drop the pump down into the window well, plug it in and leave it (having a way to test it would be nice). yes its technically a maintenance expense to make sure the pump is working, replace if necessary, etc but as you mentioned it sure beats vacuuming up water (and in my case it took out a whole walls worth of drywall because it got behind it and the drywall soaked the water up like a sponge)

 

Thanks for the confirmation that placing a pump in the window well can prevent basement flooding. However, if the system worked why did you go at high expense and replace it with interior perimeter drainage?