Question about sump pump & drain pipe


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Old 10-18-21, 12:06 PM
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Question Question about sump pump & drain pipe

We have (I assume) a perforated drain pipe buried in our walkup basement area (unfondly called "the pit" - that's subject of another rant about this house). The pipe drains into a sump pump hole in the machine room of the basement. The pump then sends the water out onto the side yard. For years the water draining into the sump has been mostly clear & free of sand. Lately the sump pit has had sand in it after it gets filled from a good size rain. I assume the sand is coming from the trench that the drain pipe is buried in.
Is the sand coming into the pit an indication of another, possibly future, problem that we'll have to deal with, or should we just forget about it? e.g. retrenching the pit and laying a new drain pipe. The new behavior of sand coming in has me curious.
 
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Old 10-18-21, 12:44 PM
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"Is the sand coming into the pit an indication of another, possibly future, problem that we'll have to deal with..."
Yes. The sand is washing in from somewhere so somewhere there is a hole forming ground subsiding. If your getting sand infrequently and there isn't much of it I wouldn't bother excavating around the house but I would keep an eye on it. I would also give your house's water handling a thorough inspection. Are all the gutters and downspouts in good working condition? Has grading around the house changed allowing water to accumulate near the house?...
 
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Old 10-18-21, 02:50 PM
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Thanks Pilot Dane! Yeah - Grading around the back of the house has settled. Water comes in under? the stub wall and into the crawl space (subject of an even more verbose house rant ) during a good rain. I'd like to get that corrected but doing so means ripping out a new(ish) deck and joists. The seepage wasn't happening when the deck was put in or I would've corrected it then. Correctly it now would be a lot of work and I'm sure wifey wouldn't be real happy. To make things worse the kitchen area is cantilevered over the foundation about 2' that's about 16" above grade. So it's very difficult to get anything changed under there. I posted about water in the crawl space in 2018 rain coming in crawl space under foundation/stem wall - DoItYourself.com Community Forums.

Here's a view of the cantilevered kitchen area

We had Thrasher come out. They were going to "fix the symptoms" and encase the crawl space in a sheet of something and add sump pumps at each end for about $10K. This would've done nothing to fix the grade / drainage issue. Another company said they would no bid because of the house cantilever.

I'm not sure what kind of company we should get out to look at the grading issue. Maybe it's just manual labor to get the grade redone.

Here's a pic of the kitchen cantilevered area:


Here a pic of "the pit" aka worthless damn space:


And finally an image of the space under the cantilevered area. ( How in the world do we do anything under this?):


Thanks for the suggestions!!
 
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Old 10-19-21, 04:47 AM
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I can see a water line several inches up on the basement/foundation wall. No wonder you are having water issues.

And the wood framing of the deck is very close to the ground. The lack of ventilation under there is also not good for the plywood closing off the bottom of the kitchen floor.
 
 

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