Sump pump question

Shop deals on ebay
shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
SpartanEpoxies
House Repair Talk

Help Support House Repair Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
T

thecaptain0220

Member
Joined
Jun 26, 2017
Messages
11
Reaction score
0
I am not sure if this is the right forum, so if its not it can be moved. Its a little bit of a weird question, but I was hoping maybe I could find some information.

We bought a house a few years ago. It is in the country and has the typical sump pump well setup. However, randomly one day the wife of the family who built the house was passing by and stopped to say hi. She mentioned something about them not wanting to put a sump pump in when they built the house. I cant remember exactly what she called it, and im kicking myself for not asking more questions :mad:. I swear she said they put in a natural drain or something like that. She pointed out that there is a clean out for it out back by the field.

There is definitely a large pipe by the field with a stone cover on it. It sounded like they ended up going with that, but had to do a sump pump as backup. Does this sound crazy? Is there anything like this that someone knows about that could point me in the right direction? I would like to be informed about it, but unfortunately i didn't get her number and cant find much on what it might be.
 
thecaptain0220 said:
I am not sure if this is the right forum, so if its not it can be moved. Its a little bit of a weird question, but I was hoping maybe I could find some information.

We bought a house a few years ago. It is in the country and has the typical sump pump well setup. However, randomly one day the wife of the family who built the house was passing by and stopped to say hi. She mentioned something about them not wanting to put a sump pump in when they built the house. I cant remember exactly what she called it, and im kicking myself for not asking more questions :mad:. I swear she said they put in a natural drain or something like that. She pointed out that there is a clean out for it out back by the field.

There is definitely a large pipe by the field with a stone cover on it. It sounded like they ended up going with that, but had to do a sump pump as backup. Does this sound crazy? Is there anything like this that someone knows about that could point me in the right direction? I would like to be informed about it, but unfortunately i didn't get her number and cant find much on what it might be.
Click to expand...

A natural drainage system or whatever she called it would use the lay of the land and natural occurring fall to let gravity take away the unwanted water so pumping wouldn’t be required. The clean out would be a point where you could access the drain line to get in and unblock it if it became plugged with silt or such. It sounded like this system worked but they also had a backup plan with the pump. Maybe the natural line would work except when there was a huge amount of water and then it couldn’t keep up and the sump pump would help out.

It is nice when previous owners can help out telling you stuff like this. You should have got her number. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out who you bought the house from and get a number if you really wanted to call them. Seeing as how she made a point to stop I would think she wouldn’t mind offering advice.
 
Thanks for the responses. I think I did actually find some contact info, so I am going to try to reach out.

That is the thing that has always perplexed me. The sump pit seems to go both ways. It seems like if you drop the water level below the inlet pipe level, it will always fill back up to that level. When I was replacing the pump, I tested it, and let it run for over a day with the pump at the bottom of the pit. It always filled back up once the pump stopped. It also seems like if you pour a bunch of water in the pit it never rises above the inlet pipe, it seems like it drains back through there. I dont have a ton of water to test with, but if I put a hose in there and run it for a while it never seems to fill up even without the sump pump running.
 
So that is ground water level, so you want to have the pump set above that level. That is how it should work just make sure you are pumping the water a long way from the house so you are not just pumping the same water.
 
They may have installed a French Drain.
Google it.
All new homes in this area are required to have one.
 
do you have a check valve installed on the outlet side of the pump?\
with the arrow pointed away from the pump?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top