Hey all,

I live in Missouri and with all the rain we've gotten lately my sump pump situation has been giving me massive headaches. The sump pit has overflowed twice within the past week and a half or so.

The first time was two Thursdays ago - we got a crazy amount of rain and the basement flooded. The sump pump was running but just couldn't keep up. I discharge the water into the front yard down the slope of the driveway but in order to do that I have to run the discharge line (the standard black corrugated line - 1.5 inch) about 50 ft along the side of the house. The discharge line had gotten all curled up on itself and when I pulled the line from the side of the house and let the water discharge directly from the house the sump pump caught up.

So I cleaned up the water (unfinished basement with a floor drain - I became the squeegee king.) I went back two hours later and the basement was flooded again. This time the sump pump had given up completely. So I rushed to a plumbing supply store and bought a new pump:

Old pump: Everbuilt 1/2 HP
New pump: Liberty 1/3 HP

The guy at the plumbing supply store assured me that the Liberty would be a better pump than the Everbuilt even though it was slightly less powerful. So I took it home and installed it quickly and the pit drained. (Side note: It had completely stopped raining by this time.)

Fast forward to last night: More rain and the sump pit overflowed again - the new pump is running solid but it is barely keeping up. The pit is full and is again flooding the basement into the floor drain (thank God for that...)

So here's my plan:

1: Get larger discharge pipe, possibly 3" to 4" and run it along the side of the house. I want to get either an adapter to connect the 1.5" discharge or get a short length of 1.5" PVC and an elbow connector and then stick that inside the larger pipe at an angle but don't actually connect the two.

2: New sump pump. And here is where my question lies:

Should I just get a more powerful pump? (3/4 to 1 HP?) OR

Should I get one of these combination pumps? I don't feel like I need a battery back up because our power lines are buried and I feel like even with a battery back up if the power went out the back up would have a tough time keeping up anyway.

I've seen some combination pumps like the Wayne model or the Basement Watchdog model but those need a marine battery.

Is it possible to use my existing brand new Liberty 1/3 HP pump as a back up to a new pump and just mount it a bit higher in the sump pit? If so, what would be the most solid method for raising it up?

I'd very much appreciate any advice you could give here.

 

Short answer...You need a larger HP pump that can handle more GPM. Get the 1 HP.

 

How about a second sump pump simolar to what you have now, with its own discharge pipe?
Set up the floats and switches so one pump starts first. (You can change the switches every year so the other pump becomes the primary pump half the time.)

Note: Whan a pump starts, it should keep going until the pit is nearly empty.

Does water pool up against the house foundation anywhere? Fix that, regrading the land if needed.

A second sump pump will perform well as a backup in all but extreme weather conditions such as last week. A third sump pump will ride shotgun for, er, be a complete backup for both of the other two while maintaining extreme performance for the whole system.

 

Sorry, I forgot to mention:

We have had two different foundation companies come out to look at the grading and they have both said that it is fine. There is a French drain on one side of the house where there is a small "valley" between our house and the neighbors. That is on the opposite side of the house from our sump pit.

Both foundation guy's only advice was to bury our discharge line and connect the discharge directly to the storm drain in front of our house (our city codes allow for this.) However, burying the discharge on that side of the house would be a nightmare because our cable is buried there and there is not a lot of space between our house and our neighbor's privacy fence on that side.

Our main issue is that we live at the bottom of three hills so we get drainage from three different sides. We also have a huge drainage basin across the street from our house that gets flooded and I'm sure that plays havoc with the ground water.

That basin is normally about ten feet deep and has a concrete drain through the middle where the storm drain goes under the street and then into a drain within the basin.

 

Thanks Allan. So if I go with a second pump doing a separate discharge would be the way to go? I've seen some photos online where there are two pumps that join into a single discharge going out of the house.

 

Dis-agree. You need a bigger pump to handle the larger amount of water. A second pump is fine but it will not solve your problem when the occasional water level and amount is high. Larger pump and bigger pipe will allow more flow and a higher rate. I like the second pump method as a back-up in case the first pump fails, but not as a substitute for the properly sized pump to handle the flow.

 

Where does the French drain dischange to? (Or is it a degenerate French drain aka swale with a natural flow down to the street?)

Such a high volume of water into your sump pump pit suggests that the backfill around your foundation has lots of interstices and voids, for example has areas of rocks not filled in with dirt. This harbors water that can rapidly make its way under your foundation. You can't see this and this is expensive to fix so it is common to just put in a larger or additional sump pum

 

It's a degenerate drain with a natural flow. The actual pipe terminates a few feet from the street.

I'm guessing that you're right and it's something below ground level. There isn't a spot in our yard where water pools and as I said, we've had two different foundation companies look at the house and neither has recommended anything drastic. They have both said that the grading from the house is fine.

We've been here three years now and this is the fourth time we've gotten water in the basement. Luckily for us our basement is unfinished and we haven't lost anything more than a crappy old mattress that got water logged. But at some point we want to finish the basement (tile because dogs and flooding preclude carpet) so we want to get these issues sorted out.

There's probably no way to test your theory about the backfill outside of digging it up? The house is 10+ years old so I would think things would have settled pretty well by now.

 

Hi Norm. I definitely plan on getting a bigger pump to use as the primary and discharging into a larger pipe outside the house. This will also help issues with the discharge tubing freezing in the winter that we've had before.

I think I will also try to figure out a way to use the other pump as a back up since it's a good pump and it's brand new.

 

Where does the floor drain go? Sometimes it goes nowhere and the water just seeps into the ground and makes its way to the sump pump drainage system to, in your case, be re-reprocessed by the sump pump.

Sump pump water and gutter-downspout water must never be directed to a septic tank system.

If you have landscaping and shrubs against the house, imagine that any gravel or mulch disappeared for just a few seconds. There must not be a valley or depression there, which will also harbor water and exacerbate basement flooding issues. If you do have gravel or mulch or other porous material there, remove all that and replace with dirt of a similar character to that in the surrounding lawn, maintaining a slope away from the house. You can optionally add mulch or gravel on top of that for cosmetic purposes.

 

Note: A French drain with no outlet, and where the primary intent is for the water to soak into the soil directly underneath, is more properly called a leach field even though it is constructed like a French drain.

 

That's a great question Allan and I've wondered that myself. What would be the way to find out? Wait till it's been dry a while and run a garden hose into it to see if the sump pit starts to fill? It drains very efficiently (I can dump an entire Wet/Dry vac into it and it's gone in seconds.)

And we don't have a septic tank - we live in the city so we tie directly into the city sewer system.

 

With that water retention basin directly across the street.... the only real solution is to having the foundation 100% sealed from the outside.

Now the water is going around in a big circle.

 

Liberty is a good pump but with your description I agree a bigger pump is needed.

Skip the dual pumps, too much complexity get the primary pump going 100%.

You also need to get the discharge resolved, 1 1/ 2 out of the house is ok but get it draining into a larger dia pipe. A long run of 1 1/2 has too much restriction and will defeat the purpose.

 

Did you get this sorted out yet? Just a thought but once you do get this sorted out maybe a some kind of a sump overflow alarm might be in order? Something like these: Sump Pump Alarm