Greetings, and thanks in advance.

I have a couple of sump pump wells in my house built in 1940.

I'm in the process of updating and am putting in new pit basins. This pipe (in the pictures) is in a couple of the wells and I can't figure what it does. It's clearly original to the house. It's like a 2" pipe with some kind of center core. It also looks like it was cut off at some point.
Any idea what this is? If you look down the pipe it has some sort of spacer down there. Like maybe the core shaft had a handle and turned at some point.
Just trying to figure out what this might be. The pipe is pretty firmly driven into the rock under the foundation. It's all rock around my yard.

Best.

F

 

That IS interesting. Can you tell what the center core is made of ?
It almost looks like a smaller pipe was pulled into the larger pipe.... like the bigger line was a pull sleeve. Maybe a sprinkler or water supply line ?

 

Hey Pete.

I'm not really sure. What I can tell you is when we get rain these pumps are really pressed into service. My house basically sits in a bowl with a rock bottom.
My original thought was that this pipe went out to drywell in the yard somewhere. Of which I have a couple I haven't been able to locate yet. Is it at all possible this could have be the original pump outfall pipe? Doesn't help explained that center core though.

 

Here's another thought.
Any possibility this is an overflow if the water level gets too high (pump fail)? Like that tube on a rinse sink under a bar?

 

They could be the old discharge lines. My first though was an overflow tube. Hard to tell how high it is in the pictures.

 

It's about 8" from the top of the pit.

I think what I'm going to do when I get time is make a cap for it and pump some compressed air in there and see what happens. I'm sure it's clogged and that's why it was abandoned.

 

Is there dirt getting into the sump pits as-is?

So long as the interior of the pits is clean and not likely to collapse in, you don't need basins or liners. Basins will reduce the overall volume of the pit and, the larger the pit volume below the level at which the pump should turn on, the better the pump performs (fewer on-off cycles).

Can you yank out the core inside that pipe? Maybe it was used in an unsuccessful attempt to unclog the pipe.

 

Hey Allan.
Thanks for the reply.
No silt in the pit. Just thought I would put in a basin because the current pit is so nasty looking (midevil).
Anyways. The core in the pipe is frozen in there. No chance of getting it out. Not an issue as the outlet has been rerouted out another way.
Just curious if anyone had an idea what this pipe (if it's an outlet at all) might be.