It has been a long time, but I'm back again. Started a new career since my last posts, so some things got put on hold.
Small 2 bedroom 1 bath house built in 1950. Raised rubblestone foundation that sits above the ground, so no underground foundation. It has a dirt crawlspace. My parents bought this house in 1979, not knowing much about houses. The crawlspace wasn't checked. My mother has been a widow since the early 90's. My father fought this problem when I was a kid and never found a solution. It had this water problem when they bought it and nobody has known what exactly to do about it. I have asked various contractors over the years and all of them had no idea how to address it. It is just very odd. The house is in a residential neighborhood in Decatur, Georgia (the US, not the country Georgia) and most of the way up a street with a hill, so the house is about 900 feet above sea level.
5-6 feet inside of the crawlspace door, there is a dug-out area of the crawlspace where you can step down into it and stand up. It is a rectangular area approximately 4 feet deep (more in some areas), about 12 feet long and 3.5 to 4 feet wide. This is presumed to have been dug out by the former owners who had the water heater in the kitchen and the FHA told them it had to get out of there before they could sell the house to my parents. So they dug this hole and put it in the crawlspace. They used cinderblocks and mortar all the way around to build a retaining wall of sorts about 3 feet tall inside of said rectangular hole that they dug. Before building this wall, it looks like a thick concrete slab maybe 4-5 inches thick was poured (visible on the back side of the pumps) and the wall sits on the outer perimeter of this slab. This seems to be why the wall has not sunk into the dirt over decades. At the "lower" end they punched a hole in the middle of the concrete slab and basically dug into the dirt to make a makeshift "open" sump pit. They put a pedestal pump in the open hole and attached the pump to a board nailed to one of the floor joists above. The water heater was placed at the "upper" end of the rectangular area. Each water heater has resided there over decades, surpisingly with very long lifespans. Yes, the water heater swims in like an inch of water and sits directly on the dirt. Obviously not good. That one is like 8-10 years old and still kicking.
In the back right corner on the crawlspace dirt side of the wall (to the right of the water heater), there is a random baseball-sized hole in the crawlspace dirt near the base of the wall. That's about 4-5 feet below outside ground level. At certain unpredictable times of the year, when it rains a certain amount, water flows out of that hole. It seems pretty apparent that it comes out of the hole and forks into two directions since it is right at the corner of the wall. I suspect that it builds up all the way around the wall and comes out wherever it can, appearing to come from everywhere behind the wall. I used to think it came from everywhere, but now I think this hole is most or all of the problem. Not sure if they dug into an underground spring/stream/creek or what that is. It only happens when it rains a lot and then activates, sometimes for days. It has odd seasons. In winter, it can rain like an inch and water will come out of the hole and trigger the pumps. In another part of the year, it can rain 3-4 inches and that entire rectangular area will stay dry. I have also witnessed a 20-30 minute cloudburst thunderstorm dump about 2 inches of rain. The yards were swimming and I'm sure that hole was maxed out with the amount of water that could come out of it. Yet curiously, that's a short time for all of that to soak into the ground 4-5 feet underground.
I dug up the old clay sewer pipe and saw no issues, checked for some kind of odd/unknown pipes/drains just outside of the house in the yard, etc. Nothing. Dug up an old septic tank about 10 feet from the house and filled it full of fill dirt thinking it was the problem. Negative. The next time the pumps came on after that, they were triggered by only an inch of rain in winter. Then 3-4 inches of rain in spring and not a drop down there. The dirt on the floor of the rectangular area always seems to be moist, but the actual crawlspace dirt on top is always dry. There is no water running under the foundation onto the top of the crawlspace dirt. This is all coming from underground.
There used to be a central HVAC in that hole between the water heater and pump. It has since been flipped horizontal. There was nowhere else to put it. Attic was not feasible and nowhere else in the house to put it. Crawlspace dirt area didn't have enough room. It is where it is.
So here's where we are now:
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/919x613q90/923/vMakpS.jpg
I took this video the other day after 3-4 inches of rain over a couple of days and the smaller pump came on and pumped out about 70 gallons at a time out every 20-30 minutes for about 2 days. As time progresses, it pumps less and less. The water is going out into the back yard about 25-30 feet from the house. No reason to believe it is coming back immediately to trigger that much pumping.
Also, ignore the "spraying" PVC pipe attached to the pump. That doesn't spray up onto the pump motors. Long story short, an idiot contractor was doing some unrelated other work down there and decided he'd drill a couple of "weep holes" for me in the pump pipe while he was there. Used too large of a drill bit on both pipes, I didn't ask for him to do it and also he didn't angle it down into the pit like it should have been. So yes, I was ticked about that. Tried to cover/wrap the holes with something temporarily until I can just change out the pipes (the hole isn't affecting the pumping much). They operated fine for years and years without a weep hole.
That area behind the wall where the hole is...it looks like the dirt washed out there. Likely why there is mud in the rectangular area on top of the slab now. Possible nut shells, among other things, are visible. I presume those flowed out of the hole. Quite a while ago, I probed that hole with an endoscope that transferred and recorded video via wifi to my cell phone and captured these images from it. It went back like a foot or two and the camera smashed into the mud and lost visibility. That's probably because the hole curves.
So here's a video of the unknown water hole putting out said water:
That's a good while after it calmed down some, I'm sure. Pardon the shaky video and odd camera angle. I was weaving my arms through pipes above the water heater to get a view behind the wall while sliding in an inch of cold, muddy water going into my shoes.
Small 2 bedroom 1 bath house built in 1950. Raised rubblestone foundation that sits above the ground, so no underground foundation. It has a dirt crawlspace. My parents bought this house in 1979, not knowing much about houses. The crawlspace wasn't checked. My mother has been a widow since the early 90's. My father fought this problem when I was a kid and never found a solution. It had this water problem when they bought it and nobody has known what exactly to do about it. I have asked various contractors over the years and all of them had no idea how to address it. It is just very odd. The house is in a residential neighborhood in Decatur, Georgia (the US, not the country Georgia) and most of the way up a street with a hill, so the house is about 900 feet above sea level.
5-6 feet inside of the crawlspace door, there is a dug-out area of the crawlspace where you can step down into it and stand up. It is a rectangular area approximately 4 feet deep (more in some areas), about 12 feet long and 3.5 to 4 feet wide. This is presumed to have been dug out by the former owners who had the water heater in the kitchen and the FHA told them it had to get out of there before they could sell the house to my parents. So they dug this hole and put it in the crawlspace. They used cinderblocks and mortar all the way around to build a retaining wall of sorts about 3 feet tall inside of said rectangular hole that they dug. Before building this wall, it looks like a thick concrete slab maybe 4-5 inches thick was poured (visible on the back side of the pumps) and the wall sits on the outer perimeter of this slab. This seems to be why the wall has not sunk into the dirt over decades. At the "lower" end they punched a hole in the middle of the concrete slab and basically dug into the dirt to make a makeshift "open" sump pit. They put a pedestal pump in the open hole and attached the pump to a board nailed to one of the floor joists above. The water heater was placed at the "upper" end of the rectangular area. Each water heater has resided there over decades, surpisingly with very long lifespans. Yes, the water heater swims in like an inch of water and sits directly on the dirt. Obviously not good. That one is like 8-10 years old and still kicking.
In the back right corner on the crawlspace dirt side of the wall (to the right of the water heater), there is a random baseball-sized hole in the crawlspace dirt near the base of the wall. That's about 4-5 feet below outside ground level. At certain unpredictable times of the year, when it rains a certain amount, water flows out of that hole. It seems pretty apparent that it comes out of the hole and forks into two directions since it is right at the corner of the wall. I suspect that it builds up all the way around the wall and comes out wherever it can, appearing to come from everywhere behind the wall. I used to think it came from everywhere, but now I think this hole is most or all of the problem. Not sure if they dug into an underground spring/stream/creek or what that is. It only happens when it rains a lot and then activates, sometimes for days. It has odd seasons. In winter, it can rain like an inch and water will come out of the hole and trigger the pumps. In another part of the year, it can rain 3-4 inches and that entire rectangular area will stay dry. I have also witnessed a 20-30 minute cloudburst thunderstorm dump about 2 inches of rain. The yards were swimming and I'm sure that hole was maxed out with the amount of water that could come out of it. Yet curiously, that's a short time for all of that to soak into the ground 4-5 feet underground.
I dug up the old clay sewer pipe and saw no issues, checked for some kind of odd/unknown pipes/drains just outside of the house in the yard, etc. Nothing. Dug up an old septic tank about 10 feet from the house and filled it full of fill dirt thinking it was the problem. Negative. The next time the pumps came on after that, they were triggered by only an inch of rain in winter. Then 3-4 inches of rain in spring and not a drop down there. The dirt on the floor of the rectangular area always seems to be moist, but the actual crawlspace dirt on top is always dry. There is no water running under the foundation onto the top of the crawlspace dirt. This is all coming from underground.
There used to be a central HVAC in that hole between the water heater and pump. It has since been flipped horizontal. There was nowhere else to put it. Attic was not feasible and nowhere else in the house to put it. Crawlspace dirt area didn't have enough room. It is where it is.
So here's where we are now:
https://imagizer.imageshack.com/v2/919x613q90/923/vMakpS.jpg
I took this video the other day after 3-4 inches of rain over a couple of days and the smaller pump came on and pumped out about 70 gallons at a time out every 20-30 minutes for about 2 days. As time progresses, it pumps less and less. The water is going out into the back yard about 25-30 feet from the house. No reason to believe it is coming back immediately to trigger that much pumping.
Also, ignore the "spraying" PVC pipe attached to the pump. That doesn't spray up onto the pump motors. Long story short, an idiot contractor was doing some unrelated other work down there and decided he'd drill a couple of "weep holes" for me in the pump pipe while he was there. Used too large of a drill bit on both pipes, I didn't ask for him to do it and also he didn't angle it down into the pit like it should have been. So yes, I was ticked about that. Tried to cover/wrap the holes with something temporarily until I can just change out the pipes (the hole isn't affecting the pumping much). They operated fine for years and years without a weep hole.
That area behind the wall where the hole is...it looks like the dirt washed out there. Likely why there is mud in the rectangular area on top of the slab now. Possible nut shells, among other things, are visible. I presume those flowed out of the hole. Quite a while ago, I probed that hole with an endoscope that transferred and recorded video via wifi to my cell phone and captured these images from it. It went back like a foot or two and the camera smashed into the mud and lost visibility. That's probably because the hole curves.
So here's a video of the unknown water hole putting out said water:
That's a good while after it calmed down some, I'm sure. Pardon the shaky video and odd camera angle. I was weaving my arms through pipes above the water heater to get a view behind the wall while sliding in an inch of cold, muddy water going into my shoes.