Basement water issues revisited

A while ago, I posted various threads trying to figure out the best solution to deal with water issues in a crawlspace basement. A swimming pool hole about 15' long, roughly 4' wide and ranging from 3' to 3.5' feet deep. A 40 gallon water heater at the far end, currently sitting flat on the ground - obviously very bad. A furnace/air handler in the middle, approximately one foot off from the floor of the hole, elevated by some styrofoam-type blocks. Also very bad. An open sump at the end. An open sump pit at the end that was never properly enclosed. Lots of water flow when it rains a lot.

The original goal was to flip the system on its side, run it the length of the hole and hang it from the floor joists above. Remove the tanked water heater and have it converted to a tankless, mounted on the back of the house. Bring in a lot of dustless crushed gravel that water can flow through, fill that hole most or all the way to the top, install a proper sump basin halfway through the process of filling the gravel in and then install pumps into the enclosed basin. Then I discovered that flipping the unit to run the length of the hole can cost as much as or more than a new system. I have someone coming out on Wednesday morning to give a quote, but I'm expecting an utter failure on the price and it likely won't be worth doing. I'll also be asking for a quote on leaving the system where it is and flipping that furnace sideways, which would hopefully allow 2 or more extra feet of elevation. I don't know what could be used to elevate it that high. I have pondered using a lot of those cement slabs that they use as a base for a/c compressors outside. But there would need to be two stacks of them, as the machine is about 3' long at least, from front to back.

The water heater could be left where it is at, elevated as high as possible (I'm thinking on probably 8 to 10 stacked 16" x 16" pavers and with as small of a natural gas water heater as I can find in the 35-40 gallon range) and simply converted to the smallest natural gas tanked model. I have decided that it isn't worth converting the water heater to a tankless. The labor and running gas pipes alone due to the tight space would be $2,000 and possibly more.

I had planned to do more, but my company cut overtime for the rest of the year, and I have reached about $3,000 in savings for the project.

I would still use the crushed gravel to fill up as much of the hole as I could, a little below the equipment. Install the proper basin, pumps, backup system, seal off the basin, etc. I wouldn't have to, but at some point I could cover it with thick cement on top of the gravel. The only thing is the "space" between the gravel and whatever will be used to elevate the furnace and water heater. Would that still cause a moisture issue?

There was also an issue with water running under the crawlspace door. I'm planning to build a cement ledge of sorts that will be 3-4 inches tall under the door and keep water out. I can easily rebuild the door to be a little shorter, and it needs to be done, anyway.

Not the first time budget has got in the way of the best laid plans.

Every inch you can raise it will mean less water to pump. If you are going to disconnect the water heater and furnace anyway you could put poly sheet over the gravel under the concrete and have a dry floor to set the units on.

Yep, didn't see that one coming so early. I was really looking forward to changing some stuff around with the extra money, but oh well.

If they can somehow give me some more space by flipping only the furnace part itself on its side and leave the air handler and such above it (not sure what they would do with the return air flow that is sticking out of the side of the furnace, though...), the system would be a little below the top of the bricks when elevated. Then all that would be left is the minor thing of switching the much cheaper natural gas water heater for a smaller model and it could also be raised to nearly the top of the hole. I'll just see what the estimates say.

Smallest natural gas water heater that I could find that would work properly is 46" tall. It is about 84" to the floor joists, so I'll just have to see what we can do for that. That gives 38" for whatever play room. Assuming they need at least 8" distance from the floor (I have no idea what the code is), that leaves 2.5 feet or so to elevate it.

I'm pondering ordering more gravel than needed and filling in all of those cinderblock holes, then cementing a thick flat layer over the top of them. In my reasoning, the gravel would allow water to flow through the wall still, but would keep any more dirt from flowing out. Plus, the holes are a spider/bug haven and I'm tired of them being there. I'd imagine that it would make the wall a little more solid and help it not look quite so ugly, too.

The best way to stop water flow into your basement is to solve the root cause. Sometimes the solution is easy, like extending downspouts or grading property so water runs away from your house.

Yes, I would drill hole the the blocks to allow water free travel, fill them with gravel for it's filtering and top that with concrete.

JaxsonSmod said:

The best way to stop water flow into your basement is to solve the root cause. Sometimes the solution is easy, like extending downspouts or grading property so water runs away from your house.

Click to expand...

http://www.houserepairtalk.com/showthread.php?t=19909

JaxsonSmod said:

The best way to stop water flow into your basement is to solve the root cause. Sometimes the solution is easy, like extending downspouts or grading property so water runs away from your house.

Click to expand...

I've pretty much chalked it up to the fact that the half of the entire neighborhood with flat yards has poor drainage problems when it rains very hard. There are two old makeshift culverts on our street. Both extending from somewhere towards the middle of the houses' backyards. One is halfway down the street and another is a few houses up the street on the other side. The house up the street, for instance, unleashes a crazy amount of water when it comes a heavy downpour for half of an hour. Whether this is multiple people's sump pumps going into a drainage ditch or just drainage from many yards on our street and the back street behind it, I'm not sure. The street fills from side to side with at least half of a foot of water from the culvert up the street, the flat yards get standing water inches deep and a small creek-like effect flows from yard to yard in the front and back yards. You can see that even the driveway that is above the lower dirt yard gets a couple of inches of water flowing freely across it. I have determined that the domino effect of trying to "fix" anything about this is an enormous problem that likely goes back to when they built the neighborhood. Our city officials can barely keep the streets worked on, so I have no faith in going to the city for anything to try to fix this issue. My best option seems to be to just try to keep the water out with sheer force instead of trying to beat it.

Those dual 1/3HP Storm Pro's that I'm planning to put in the basin will each kick 3,500 gallons per hour and barely use 5 running amps each, so I have figured out what would be best for the pumps and setup. On the backup battery system that I'll be installing, they'd both run for about 5-10 hours every few minutes. Just need to get the equipment elevated. My main question is always going to be...when they put that system and water heater in to begin with, WHY didn't they elevate it before all of that was connected?

Before I started checking things out more and getting more involved in it, my mother (who is in her upper 50's) couldn't get down in that hole or really into the basement door very easily. So she couldn't monitor what they were doing. Sometimes it can be hard to find time away from work to help out with that, too. I'm not a spring chicken (in my 30's), and this problem presented itself to my father when I was a kid. So far, I'm the only one to have come up with a reasonable solution to it.

Here are some photos from a visit when I happened to think to go down there during a very hard downpour, before I added in the extra 1/2HP pump. They used to have only 1/3HP down there. I estimated that to be about 35 gallons per minute that it could pump out, and as you can see, that thing was not keeping up. That was why I used the existing odd setup (boards connected to the floor joists - terrible idea) in a panic to add on another pump until I could figure out a more permanent solution. Another downpour happened when I was over and went down to check. Both pumps were running full speed at one point and were barely keeping up. I estimated that flow to be 100 gallons per minute going out with both pumps. They kept up - it never went out of the top of the sump hole itself (which I suspect to be 60 gallons in capacity), but its a lot of water. My new setup after all is said and done would kick out 120 gallons per minute and be submersible. With the equipment elevated, there would be a lot more buffer room in the gravel for the pumps to catch up. Its a rare event to get that much flow, but a 3-4 stalling rain system can do it when the ground is saturated.