Crawlspace water issues (continued)

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jmr106

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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.
 
(Continued Part 2)

I'm definitely not digging 6-7 feet all the way around the house and installing some odd underground drains. I'm not even sure that they would work very well. I would like to just concrete around the bottom and sides of the existing makeshift sump hole that they have with thick concrete, to stabilize it. Then throw the basin in there (18" x 22" - 22 gallon capacity) with holes drilled in it and wrapped in some type of fabric to keep debris out. Then just bury the sump basin level with some type of gravel or rocks. The basin could be weighted down inside with some type of bricks or concrete (circular?) that span the approximate inside area of the basin. I would also spread a layer of inches of rocks/gravel across the rest of the rectangular area to have something to walk on without walking in the mud. The idea is the water would flow underneath and it won't be muddy, but also it allows me to put in submersible pumps into a basin. No, it won't be waterproof or any of that. It is simply to keep up with the water and get it back out. I'm not seeing an easy or inexpensive way to solve this. Paying someone to put in some type of underground drain all the way around the house would probably cost half of what the house will sell for (neighborhood has gone downhill over the years and property values dropped). She'll eventually sell the house as-is for a reasonable amount and someone else will have to figure it out.

A few photos...

vMakpS.jpg


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Yes, that rectangular area does get a bit of white mold sometimes because it stays moist a lot.

What's the feasibility of this simple idea? There's no way that too much concrete is going down there. Can't get a concrete truck out here in the back yard, it's just too much work and I don't have time for it. I don't want to pay anyone else to do anything for it. Just want to get some pumps in there that don't jar the whole freaking bedroom above that (said pedestal pipes are attached to wood that is attached to floor joists of bedroom above). I have also tried to rig other ways for the pedestal pumps to not be attached to a board on the floor joists, but nothing is sturdy enough for the torque that they have. Plus they are loud in general and I'm ready for a basin with quiet pumps.

Throwing in two iON Storm Pro 1/3 HP that will each kick out about 3,000 gallons an hour on just 4.5 amps. One will be set as a backup higher than the other. They have a small version of a float switch that attaches to the pipe and lets you pick when it should trigger. Run the pipes up through the lid (a 2 inch pipe for each pump individually and they'll join together into one pipe right outside of the house) and call it a day. That's a half-arse way to do it, but I'm just tired of that problem. If you have any simple ideas to improve said half-arse way of doing it, I am open to that. Just not planning to do anything big. I'm not convinced that anything short of a full house/yard drain will work. May as well buy another house for what that would cost, so not worth it.

Also, what are your thoughts of what this hole is supplied by? Spring? Underground stream? That dirt is packed tight and water just kind of glides off from it like a rock. I have looked at all sorts of geological maps and can't find anything water-related in this exact area. There is a creek down the street thousands of feet, for instance. It doesn't flow anywhere near our yard. I have looked at old maps and everything that I can. There should be nothing at all in this area that would cause this. It obviously has a massive supply of water from somewhere. I'm not convinced that an "aquifer" could exist in this particular area, but I guess it is possible. My curiosity for that sort of thing gets the best of me and everyone that I know has never heard of such a thing.
 
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I would start by digging a ditch along the walls that directs the water into the sump pit to keep the middle area dry.

It looks like your T&P valve is releasing for some reason. You may need to put an expansion tank near your hot water tank to help absorb some of the hydrostatic expansion that occurs when the water heats up.

Submersible pumps would work well there, I hear they are quieter but I don't have the experience to know if that is true. I always see submersible pumps installed in commercial buildings and residential towers. That is a lot of water... My concern would be that all that water will bring erosion and sediment with it. It's been doing it for a long time so the worst of it has already been done I'm sure. Small bits are ok but anything big could jam up the impeller. Are the two pumps you have now suspended off the bottom the pit? I'm guessing they probably are to avoid sucking up rocks if they get washed in. That might be a little harder to do with a submersible pump unless you build a stand for them.

I think you are on the right track about it being ground water that is draining in. I suspect that clay drain you are referring to is part of your perimeter drain system. I'm not sure why it would be entering under your house unless they were always pumping it out for some reason. Is it possible the drainage pipe is blocked somewhere near the city drain connection side that is causing it to back up and dump into your basement whenever it rains instead of letting it go to the city if that is what is at the other end?

Dumping all that water 20 feet away... I suspect you are dumping the same water more than once unless it is going into a drain, slope, or ditch that directs it away from your basement.

I have a trampoline pit dug in my back yard and it fills with water when it rains. I pump it out so the kids can play on it in the spring and fall (it never floods in the summer because the ground is too dry). The ground is quite clay like but there are sediment paths that the water travels along and it fills the pit quite fast. At first I used a small pump with a garden hose attached to the discharge and let it pump all day with no results so I dug in a pit and installed a sump pump with a 2" discharge. That pumps it out in about 10 minutes and dumps the water into the city drainage. My point with this is that the water travels a long way to fill the pit. Like you, it fills for days after a rain storm so I know it must be draining all my neighbors yards as well because my yard simply could not have held that much water. So if you dump all the water too close to yourself you may find the easiest path for that water to go is back into your basement for you to pump out again.
 
I would start by digging a ditch along the walls that directs the water into the sump pit to keep the middle area dry

I have poked around in the dirt inside of the wall area and there typically is 2-3 inches of dirt and then I hit the thick concrete slab underneath that the wall itself is sitting on. So yes, mud has washed in over the decades, probably from the back side of that wall where the open spaces are. I have pondered just taking a big concrete mixing tub and a flat shovel down there and shoveling all of that dirt off from the floor and taking it to the back yard somewhere. Then I could take the hose and basically spray what would then be the thick concrete slab inside of the wall and it would be quite clean without anything to get mold and such on. That slab is also why the water heater hasn't collapsed into the ground. So with that, there's no way to dig channels to divert the water unless I get a jackhammer and start breaking up the slab. Also, the water heater (to be changed in the near future) will need some type of stand to elevate it off from the concrete slab. Still brainstorming that idea, but I'll need that in place ahead of time if I'm going to put rocks/gravel on the floor. Current concerns are that any type of metallic stand would end up rusting a leg and the whole thing would just break and fall over. Have considered a stand of cinderblocks with rebar and concrete and a number of other things. Nothing definite yet.

It looks like your T&P valve is releasing for some reason. You may need to put an expansion tank near your hot water tank to help absorb some of the hydrostatic expansion that occurs when the water heats up.

There is one attached to the pipe above the water here. Just saw it today. Is that it in the photo? http://oi64.tinypic.com/dxqx2.jpg


Submersible pumps would work well there, I hear they are quieter but I don't have the experience to know if that is true. I always see submersible pumps installed in commercial buildings and residential towers. That is a lot of water... My concern would be that all that water will bring erosion and sediment with it. It's been doing it for a long time so the worst of it has already been done I'm sure. Small bits are ok but anything big could jam up the impeller. Are the two pumps you have now suspended off the bottom the pit? I'm guessing they probably are to avoid sucking up rocks if they get washed in. That might be a little harder to do with a submersible pump unless you build a stand for them.

The submersible pumps will definitely be quieter. I picked the Ion Storm Pro because it moves a ridiculous amount of water on very low amps and is one of the quietest pumps available. Most reviews indicate that the water moves so fast that all that you hear is a "whoosh" sound coming from the water itself and the pump can't be heard if you aren't right next to it. Well, as can be seen in the photos...all of that dirt inside of the wall area likely washed down from that area behind the water heater where most of the flow comes from. It has done that in 40 years and I don't see where it has "hurt" anything other than making it muddy down there. If I just reinforce that concrete sump pit with thick concrete, put in a sump basin wrapped with landscaping cloth (t0 keep out debris) and surround the basin and floor inside of the wall with rocks/gravel...the water coming into the sump basin should be clear. The existing pedestal pumps are elevated on a 2"-3" high long paver. Any sediment that manages to get into the pumps simply gets pumped out. The new pumps that I'm putting in have a 1/2 inch solids handling capacity. The rocks/gravel and fabric around the sump pit should theoretically filter everything to the point where the water looks clean coming into the basin. I haven't figured out exactly what I'll elevate the new pumps on, but I could put in some type of circular pavers in the bottom of the basin to also keep it weighted down from floating. Each pump is about 29 pounds, so that already will have some weight.


I think you are on the right track about it being ground water that is draining in. I suspect that clay drain you are referring to is part of your perimeter drain system. I'm not sure why it would be entering under your house unless they were always pumping it out for some reason. Is it possible the drainage pipe is blocked somewhere near the city drain connection side that is causing it to back up and dump into your basement whenever it rains instead of letting it go to the city if that is what is at the other end?

I don't think they have any type of drain system on the property. The old concrete septic tank that I filled with dirt "may" have had a drain field. somewhere out in the middle of the back yard. In the 50's when this house was built, the construction companies didn't have a lot of codes and they literally built them just about however they wanted to. I have found various defects in the building process of the house itself where they cut corners in construction. So yeah, I don't feel that anyone put any type of drain system in. The previous owners cut a lot of corners, too.

In the back area of our yard, there is a sloped gully area where there are big pine trees. When it rains for days, that turns into a literal creek and might have an area 3-4 feet wide and 4-5 inches deep that basically runs from back yard to back yard from somewhere up the hill. Yes, the pine trees are already waterlogged when that happens (maybe a few times each year) with that having been going on for decades, so they're used to it with no signs of having any issues. I just don't want to pump the water there. I pump the water to the right side of the yard about 10 feet away from the property line and it runs downhill from there just like the other water that runs into our yard from up the street somewhere. The whole neighborhood seems to have water issues because whoever designed this in the 50's wasn't thinking and planning for it. The neighbor's yard is overgrown back there and they never use it for anything. I know that their gas water heater is in their house because I saw them cleaning it one day when it flooded their house, so I'm not doing anything to their crawlspace by having it discharge on that side of our yard.
 
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Update 1/4/2019: So I went down to the crawlspace this morning for a thorough examination. It has been raining for many days. We just had a soaking front pass through and then another one came after that. Had a flood watch this morning and some light flash flooding between yards in the neighborhood. The little pump was kicking on every 6 minutes and staying on for 1.5 minutes to pump out approximately 60-70 gallons.

Since December 30th we've had 2.61 inches of rain. I measured from the crawlspace door over to the area just above the mystery water hole and then took that outside and measured over to mark that area outside. I was wrong about how far down the water hole is in the crawlspace dirt. Upon closer inspection, it is about 3 feet max below outside ground level, if even that far. Might be 2.5 feet. Another area a foot or two away from there had a small trickle coming out of the dirt on that same side.

Outside of the house...the area where that hole putting the water out is located is between two sewer lines that are each about 5 feet on either side. One of them is the washing machine drain pipe that comes out of the back of the house as pvc pipe and boots onto the old clay sewer pipe. The other sewer line on the opposite direction is from the kitchen sink, toilet and tub drain and joins into one main pipe that also goes out and meets the same clay sewer pipe. That clay sewer pipe runs on out and joins the main sewer line that runs perpendicular to the house.

Curiously, when I look at the video that I took of the water in that hole...it looks like the water is falling down from the left side (which would be where the sewer pipe is from the washing machine drain). So I'm wondering if the city sewer isn't backing up drain water and it is running out of that old clay pipe that the washing machine pipe connects onto. From the point of view of looking at that water hole, about 5 feet "left" outside is that washing machine drain pipe into the clay sewer pipe. Think it is worth digging down to see?


(video quality needs to be turned up manually)

If I just started digging up near the back of the house where theoretically that hole should be 2-3 down...do you think I would find a similar diameter hole in the dirt and see it as I was digging in order to follow it to the source? I mean, on one hand, I would think it would have to be that same diameter all the way to the source or it wouldn't be able to flow at that rate if it was just passing through packed dirt. On the other hand, what if I dig there and don't see anything? If nothing else, reducing this one hole from putting out water if it is from something leaking like a sewer pipe...that's half or more of the water going down there. All of them might be branching off from the same thing in different directions, too.

On the back side of the wall opposite of the water heater, I saw two more trickles coming out of the dirt - one about a foot down from the top putting out a moderate amount and another a foot away putting out just a trickle.

On the completely opposite end of the rectangle on the other side of the sump pumps, there is an area where it sprays out water like a faucet down near the slab that they poured. I looked down into the holes of the cinderblocks and saw damp soil in one, but no moving water. I looked into the one next to it and saw wet soil, but no moving water. The water was spraying out from a little hole in between the two with no indication where it was coming from. Literally looked like it was coming out of thin air. Maybe just spraying up from the ground in between the two blocks where I couldn't see it. It is possible that this may be water running around from the completely opposite side of the wall, however. Haven't seen any direct places on the pump side, just on the water heater side.

So yes, we know that it comes from different sides, but I'm wondering if that hole in the corner isn't distributing water from a main source to feed all of those and they're just taking different paths.

6A4VqT.jpg
 
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Your situation makes me think of a house we had when I was a kid.
We were living in a small town in the Washington Cascades.
The house was up on the side of high hill [side of a mountain] above the town.
Half of the crawl space was dug out to a 7' dirt floor basement.
Every late winter, spring and early summer the "basement would flood, some times as much as hip deep interfering with the operation of the huge wood/coal furnace in the basement.
The story was that the house was built over a spring.
My father finally dug a drain at a low point to keep the water from building up in the basement.
It never did dry out completely.
But, it did get better after they regraded the street in front of the house lowering it maybe 5' to 8', or more.
Then, the spring began to run out the slope on the side of the street.
The city had to take measures to keep the slope from eroding out the yard and house.
Don't know if there's any help for you there.
but, it sounds like a similar problem to me.
 
Your situation makes me think of a house we had when I was a kid.
We were living in a small town in the Washington Cascades.
The house was up on the side of high hill [side of a mountain] above the town.
Half of the crawl space was dug out to a 7' dirt floor basement.
Every late winter, spring and early summer the "basement would flood, some times as much as hip deep interfering with the operation of the huge wood/coal furnace in the basement.
The story was that the house was built over a spring.
My father finally dug a drain at a low point to keep the water from building up in the basement.
It never did dry out completely.
But, it did get better after they regraded the street in front of the house lowering it maybe 5' to 8', or more.
Then, the spring began to run out the slope on the side of the street.
The city had to take measures to keep the slope from eroding out the yard and house.
Don't know if there's any help for you there.
but, it sounds like a similar problem to me.


Did you ever look for the source or find any holes or anything? I'm kind of curious what I would find if I dug up this larger hole in the video, for instance. I would guesstimate that's about 2.5 feet under the outside ground level and it looks like it is falling downwards from the left side. There is a drain pipe to the left that also connects with an old red clay pipe that is also to the left. If it is falling downwards as the video suggests, then it must be coming from something further up into the ground. That's going to be quite interesting to see where this leads if I can find that hole by digging outside. It is the one that puts out the most water. A similar HVAC system used to be on the floor of that hole. Had it moved for that very reason. This is basically a 20,000+ people city. No known issues around here with the water table that I am aware of. That's the toughie. The yard is maybe 75 feet wide x 100 or a little more long. The far back is pine trees.

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This is the side of the house. The white pvc 1.5" pipe comes out and attaches to a low profile black flexible hose further back. That discharges off to the side of the yard. A barely noticeable slope. Further back from there, it does slope down, but that area turns into a little creek when it rains because of minor flash flooding from yard to yard up the hill when it rains a lot. That runs along the path under the trees for a day or two after a few days of rain. I have marked the water path back there under the trees. Literally looks like a little creek for a couple of days after a few inches of rain, but goes from yard to yard.

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So as you can see, I can't pump over that ridge back there to add to that water and don't want the pine trees soaking in it for days. Granted, the ground was already saturated from a previous amount of days of rain before getting 3 inches of rain on top, so water isn't flowing out of the ground randomly or anything. I don't keep the hose that close to the other yard most of the time. I can move it wherever. There isn't anywhere else to pump. Can't pump to sewer/street or any specific drain - illegal. Plus I don't have one to do that, anyway.

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There is one attached to the pipe above the water here. Just saw it today. Is that it in the photo? http://oi64.tinypic.com/dxqx2.jpg
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That would be it. Give it a tap with something metal and listen to it. If you hear a hollow ping on one side and a dense dung on the other side then it should be good. If it's a dense dung sound on both sides then either the bladder has failed or it needs to be recharged. I believe that is the bladder type so if it's failed then it gets swapped out with a new one. If it's fastened with a band then it won't resonate properly and will sound like a "dung" rather than a "ping" tricking you to think it's filled full of water (failed) when it might actually not be.

You could also drain it and check pressers ( the proper way to test them) but the above is the quick and dirty method to give you an idea if there might be a problem worth further investigation.
 
We had a lot of rain a couple of weeks ago and not really much rain lately. It started raining yesterday around 6 or 7pm and stopped around 3am. Over that time, we got 1.28 inches of rain and that triggered the pump (and flow from that water hole) at 2am. That's a ridiculously low amount of water to have sewers backing up into residential sewers to leak water from a pipe. I haven't had a chance to dig down for that hole yet. Planning for maybe next weekend when it isn't as cold. At 2 to 2.5 feet under the ground, I can't imagine where all of that water would be coming from other than a pipe. I found an older photo that shows just how much further that is up closer to the crawlspace level/ground level than initially thought. That is at best 2.5 feet down and possibly closer to 2 feet from the top of the crawlspace dirt. The crawlspace was uneven at some point and some areas were higher and lower, which is why the ridge on the left looks higher (and is) than the part straight across. That water hole goes back about 1 foot and clearly goes off to the left and/or also goes up closer to outside ground level. What are the possibilities of a sewer backup of rain water after just 1.25" of rain? I'm going to dig down 3 feet or a little more right at the back of the house in that area to make sure that I don't miss anything. I will probably go a foot or two in each direction, as well.

hole.jpg
 
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If it is like this guy per haps when the sewer was hooked up to the city they broke into a under ground stream .


 
I never thought I'd come across someone who willingly wants to do the exact same thing that we have in this nightmare crawlspace. I found this little gem yesterday:

https://www.diychatroom.com/f19/wat...oo-close-foundation-how-fix-build-wall-44655/

Apparently someone dug out their crawlspace for storage or something before they moved into their house. They likewise inherited this problem. It also looks like the crawlspace was dug out so that the water heater was placed down there for that house, as well. They dug right up against the foundation wall and are taking on water. Someone stated that for every foot that you dig down, you should be at the very least that same distance away from the foundation wall in the crawlspace. This guy wanted to build a cinderblock and mortar wall just like what we have in our crawlspace and I have no idea why. Granted, the water from his situation is clearly groundwater seeping in from the foundation. It looks like he has more of a nightmare than I do...

The thing that also makes me curious is that I know that hole goes back at least a foot. I tried to probe it about a year or so ago with the endoscopic pipe camera...it went straight back about a foot and smashed into the mud. That's because I didn't know that there is another hole just a few inches inside and to the left that the water is coming out of. It can't even be seen directly, but is there and I only know that because of the video that I took weeks ago when it rained a lot.

hole.jpg


So now I'm also wondering why that hole even goes back any further than where the water is coming out of, just a few inches in. I thought that maybe it just tried to find the path of least resistance, but it all looks the same diameter all the way back, yet no water seems to come from the back portion. Only from the other hole just inside.
 
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I'm also wondering about the previous owners of the house. They had a tendency to rig things and do stuff in an odd way. The washing machine drain pipe joins the bathroom sink drain pipe and runs out separately from the toilet/tub/kitchen sink pipe to the clay sewer pipe in the yard. That pipe has always ran across the top of the crawlspace and then out one of the cinderblock crawlspace vents and then into the ground. Normally it goes into the ground before exiting the crawlspace. The part in the house and crawlspace used to be cast iron and we cut that out like 20 years ago and booted it onto the other cast iron section still in the ground. We didn't want to do all of that digging in the crawlspace to run it under the ground like it should have been to begin with. I'm wondering if the previous owners didn't change that cast iron pipe in the ground a long time ago and basically just cut off an old pipe extension of the sewer and added a new pipe (the cast iron pipe) to connect to the clay pipe. That is going to be highly annoying if I find that hole and trace it to an old "open" pipe that has been cut off and is just sitting there under the ground dumping water from the city sewer drain when it rains a lot. It is kind of a vendetta because it was decades of headaches for my family all the way back to when I was a kid. Nobody knew where the water was coming from and I think I'm the first one to have discovered this water hole behind the wall. Time will tell...I think I may dig this on Friday.
 
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Alright, I'm good to go for a dig on Friday with decent weather. So realistically speaking...if I dig down to try to find what I think should be this open water hole running underground and see if I can follow it to its source...is it reasonable for me to assume that I might find an open hole underground of similar size to the one in the crawlspace dirt? Obviously, it won't have water running through it. From the times that I have seen it, it puts out maybe 15-20 gallons per minute when it has rained hard enough and for long enough. I'm having a hard time picturing regular, compacted dirt letting this much water through at such a high rate in just that one particular spot. I don't know that much about geological sediments and such...I would imagine that even underground springs/streams have an open channel like that underground where they have just eroded away whatever they could. So theoretically in my brain I'm picturing digging and happening upon a possibly soft-ball-sized or baseball-sized channel in the dirt 2-3 feet down that would be visible. I would think that after all of these years, it "should" be visible and stable enough to see.

I'm going to see about the makeshift groundwater level indicator using PVC pipe, as well.
 
Alright, I'm good to go for a dig on Friday with decent weather. So realistically speaking...if I dig down to try to find what I think should be this open water hole running underground and see if I can follow it to its source...is it reasonable for me to assume that I might find an open hole underground of similar size to the one in the crawlspace dirt? Obviously, it won't have water running through it. From the times that I have seen it, it puts out maybe 15-20 gallons per minute when it has rained hard enough and for long enough. I'm having a hard time picturing regular, compacted dirt letting this much water through at such a high rate in just that one particular spot. I don't know that much about geological sediments and such...I would imagine that even underground springs/streams have an open channel like that underground where they have just eroded away whatever they could. So theoretically in my brain I'm picturing digging and happening upon a possibly soft-ball-sized or baseball-sized channel in the dirt 2-3 feet down that would be visible. I would think that after all of these years, it "should" be visible and stable enough to see.

I'm going to see about the makeshift groundwater level indicator using PVC pipe, as well.

You may find as you dig through it that it collapses in on itself making it hard to see at first, so it may not be like a cross sectional cut that you are hoping to find, but you should still see the water and that will make a soft spot in the ground that you should be able to put your fist through and look for the soft spot/hole.

You will possibly want a wet/dry shop vacuum also to remove any pooling water as you dig. It may be hard to shovel out the slop as you get a muddy watery mixture.

If you get to a root bound area and need to protect the roots then using a pressure washer and shop vacuum (I’m told) is the best and easiest method for removing the dirt and “digging” the hole. I see the city crews use that method all the time on a much larger scale, and the plumbers that I work with use that method often when they need to dig around trees and pipes.

Best of luck!
 
I'm not going to have a company do the work, but I checked with a couple of pro's to get their opinion and have a peek. I'm told that's an odd thing to have happen and nobody knows what in the world is going on with it. Even with the crawlspace dug out, that's more than just ground seepage.

Their advice:

I could start at the exit hole in the crawlspace and dig towards the outside with the hole getting smaller and smaller until it's nonexistent. Bad idea. Can't get behind the wall and I don't want to have general rain water coming in every time that it rains due to digging closer to the outside.

Another statement was that more than likely the exit hole may be the convergence of point of least resistance for the water in saturated soil or a high water table that goes up and down seasonally; so with extended downpours, the water table simply raises to a point that it flows under the house. I'm still open to that idea and we've talked about that here. I have even checked with the US Geological Survey for maps and such of any water sources. Plus the house is halfway down on a hill street about 5-10 feet above the houses down the street and well over 900 feet above seal level in general.

Other speculation is a failed french drain or 'pipe drain' may be found. Some people here have mentioned something similar in the past. I know what a french drain is, but not too familiar with a 'pipe drain' or is that basically the same thing? Since the former owners of the house knew they were going to dig out the crawlspace for the water heater to be moved, I could humor the idea that someone (doubtful, though) dug around the perimeter and put in an underground french drain around the house to channel water into that corner behind the wall and thus across the floor and into that makeshift sump that they made. However, if they only put the french drain halfway down the depth that the crawlspace was dug out, that was basically worthless.

If this dig fails to find anything, I'm throwing a basin down there with a couple of 1/3HP submersible pumps and some rocks/gravel inside and behind the wall to prevent erosion. I might cram some gravel into that hole as far as I can, as well...works as a good filter for the dirt. I'll be quite thrilled if I can find some type of pipe or odd drain that I can cap, but I'm also wary of what capping it might do elsewhere if it is a perimeter drain. Just have to wait and see. Thanks for the advice everyone.
 
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