The displaced water has to go somewhere.
JMR: keep in mind that you will increase the flow rate if you put more holes in the blocks. Unless you have a way to calculate that, it is a guessing game whether you have enough pumping power.
And, now that you have an idea of the cost for refitting your units and cleaning up your trench, have you reconsidered the costs of diverting the water before it reaches your crawlspace? You wrote that off as too expensive back at the beginning, but now you have numbers to compare it to.
It is a guessing game. Hard to know which pumps to get or how much that flow is going to increase. I can't see a feasible way of even calculating that, mainly because I still have no idea if this is a spring/storm drain or intermittent stream that goes crazy when it rains a lot. Or, it could just be rain water from the surrounding ground that comes in when the ground is saturated.
Yeah, I looked into stuff like the french drains and other deep drains around the outside of the house a long time ago. Waterproofing in general gets up around the cost of a new car. These drains around the perimeter of the house seem to do the same, which is why those were written off. Average cost for a front and back yard regrade averages a $5,000 starting cost for pros. It apparently can double that in a hurry.
Even after days of rain, usually the water flow stops a day or two after it stops raining and the pump quits coming on completely. Should I just not drill into the wall and just put sheet drain up as-is to redirect it? I'm not sure exactly why they made such a huge hole for a little water heater. This was before there was any system at all down there and there was just a floor furnace, so I don't understand the former owner's intent. A 15' long hole for a water heater that's maybe 2' across at best?
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