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House sump pump lines...


racer212

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Ok - here goes.

 

My house has full finished basement, but there is a crawl space under the floor and sump below that. Not easy to get to. In my front yard along the property line is gravel bed, and there is a black PVC line there that keeps bowing up and un-buying itself. Looks like crap. It apparently goes up to the side of the house then into the crawl space to the sump. Twice in the three years I've lived here I've taken a pick and shovel, dug a trench under the line and reburied it best I can - but I guess with temperature changes etc it just pushes its way back up.

 

On the other side of my property my neighbor has the same setup. Except that 1-2x a day his drain pumps out a good bit of water - probably a half gallon or so a couple times a day. His is the only house in the neighborhood that seems to pump water at all. Still - I was concerned that our houses were that close together and he has all this water in his sump and mine isnt pumping. 

 

So I pulled up the little catch in the basement floor and crawled my fat ass over to the sump. To ad insult to injury someone ran the main sewer line right over the lid on the sump. Took me a minute to weasel the lid off and look down. There is a pump there covered in dust, and zero evidence the sump has ever been wet. Some heavy, dry dust in the bottom - no water line or any sign of water ever. I get the lid put back on and while I"m there look around a bit - and I notice that the drain from the sump pump to my drain outside isnt even connected - and as far as I can tell never has been in the 20 years the house has stood. The line from the sump and the line from outdoors kind of end in the same area but arent lined up and actually way overlap in length. Looks like it was half ass put in and never connected.

 

So my real question is - should I either figure it out and connect the line like it was supposed to be - or more to my liking just cut and cap the line outside so it doesnt keep sticking up out of the ground. Just eliminate it entirely. Do I even need it??

 

A third alternative I guess is there is a deck drain in the area from the sump - it's connected to the basin under the water heater, I suppose to let water drain off if the heater leaks. Its a smaller diameter but I could probably tie the sump pump line into that drain without a too much fuss.

 

Any thoughts? Never had a house with sump before.

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8 hours ago, DBLXX said:

If it ain't broke (well, it technically is) don't fix it.  

 

Can't you just bury it further, put something heavy on it (cinder block) and cover it up?

It connects to a drain built into the sidewalk so I cant real bury it any deeper - at least on that end. And where it ends up at the house is also fixed where it passes through the foundation...

 

 

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8 hours ago, DBLXX said:

If it ain't broke (well, it technically is) don't fix it.  

 

Can't you just bury it further, put something heavy on it (cinder block) and cover it up?

it's sort of forced near the surface - so a block on top means the block is sitting above ground in my yard.

I've considered reburying it and pinning it downward with like a couple loops of rebar "stapling" it down in the ground. Dont know how long that would potentially hold.

I assume having this drain is code or something (kudos to the two separate home inspections done before I bought the house that didnt note that its not connected) but doesnt appear to be doing a fucking thing.

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11 hours ago, racer212 said:

or more to my liking just cut and cap the line outside so it doesnt keep sticking up out of the ground. Just eliminate it entirely.

 

12 hours ago, racer212 said:

and I notice that the drain from the sump pump to my drain outside isnt even connected

 

If that can be connected, I would do that and eliminate the outside line.  So if the pump was needed it would pump the water outside and wouldn't hurt anything as long as it wasn't a ongoing thing. 

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This is what I know about sump pumps. You don't need them...until you do and then you'll be happy you had one. I had one in my house in NJ. It was always dry. Had cobwebs in it so never paid much attention to it. Then one winter, it snowed, then melted a little, then froze, then rained...a lot. The frozen snow formed a perfect catch basin for the rain against one of my basement windows and then basically all the rain in my back yard started draining into my basement through the window (around the frame). I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a waterfall...in my house. Sump pump was dead so I had about six inches of water in my basement before I could get another pump hooked up and running (Dad still lived nearby and had a spare).

 

So the point is that just because you have never had water down there doesn't mean that you will never have water down there. Shit happens. Don't disable it. 

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Re-burry it and pour a little concrete along it so it can't bend and pop back up?  Or maybe strap a steel pipe to it to do the same?  But since it's not connected and the two ends don't line up it sounds like you might just wanna pull it up or whatever needs to be done to connect it, then re-burry.

 

I have no idea if it'll ever be needed, never heard of such a thing.  I can only compare it to the bilge pump on a boat, "I've never needed it" wouldn't make me cap it off.

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