Water table woes

[NEfarmgirl]

After a wet start to spring we discovered something that I know I shouldn't complain about, but it is causing issues. Friday night after we had gotten some rain I noticed a little water in our basement and cleaned it up. Sometimes the window leaks a little during a downpour and we are in the process of getting it repaired. Saturday morning my son announces there is a lot of water on the laundry room floor and he said it was spraying everywhere. I investigate and find it pouring out in a nice stream from under the sewer pipe. Thankfully it was caught fairly fast and it is a concrete floor. I get the water so it is diverted into a bucket and let hubby know since he was not home. Yesterday it still is leaking so we suspect a broken sewer pipe and set out to dig it up to check it. The pipe is not broke and after the pipe was located and dug under about a foot we had lunch. After lunch there was water standing in the hole and it covered about half the pipe. It was clean water and the only water sent out of the house was to quickly wash hands so we knew the amount of water was way to much. Hubby calls someone to look over the pipe and check the water situation out. We have no broken pipes, no leaks anywhere, the septic tank is fine, the laterals to the tank is fine. We were told the ground water level is that high; it is about 3 feet from the top of the ground right now. So we were told to leave the hole open so maybe things will dry up, reseal around the sewer pipe inside and out and put a layer of rock down before backfilling the hole. We learned the hard way the previous owner put the basement under the house and did not put drain tile in and we were told if we built the dirt up around the foundation more, we shouldn't have any more issues.

My question is would drain tile even help with the water level being so high? We sit in a low valley (we are not in a floodplain) so really there is no where else for the water to go. We are debating running it on the side of the house that we had the leak since the rest of the basement has been dry. We are expecting more rain towards the end of the week.

[TnAndy]

Originally Posted by NEfarmgirl

We learned the hard way the previous owner put the basement under the house and did not put drain tile in and we were told if we built the dirt up around the foundation more, we shouldn't have any more issues.

My question is would drain tile even help with the water level being so high?

Probably wasn't built right to start, and no easy fix is (like more dirt) is going to fix it.

First, check your roof drainage. Got gutters ? Do they drain right, and is that drainage led away from the house ? That is the cause of many water-in-basement problems.

If that is not the problem, then you have a real problem. The key to a dry basement is give the water SOMEPLACE else to go. Normally, that is done by installing foundation drains on the outside of the wall, below the level of the floor, then leading those drains to gravity fed to a lower spot well away from the house, OR to a central sump (big hole) that has a sump pump that pumps the water out, away from the house (more common in the north where basements are completely under ground.....here in the South, we tend to have part of the basement 'day lighted'....that is, out of the ground)

[Harry Chickpea]

If he saw water "spraying" I wouldn't rule out a broken water pipe.

I owned a place in Vermont that had a high water table. The basement had more in common with a boat than a regular basement. The key to sanity was a French drain, sump pump, and water powered back-up sump pump. As long as the water was constantly pumped a few yards away, it was kind of like a dent in the surface of the water table. Sometimes the pump was going three hours a day though.

[JoePa]

From what you described it does sound like the water table is above the leak under the sewer pipe - I don't know if you have city water or a well so I can't comment on that aspect - if you have city water then yes a break in the water pipe can be an issue but if you have a well you can stop the water - now back to the ground water - once the water table goes down you can patch up the leak around the sewer pipe using a special water retaining mix - then you need to put a sump in the low spot in the cellar and install a pump - it will do two things - reduce the water pressure around the outside of the cellar and get rid of any water that might get into the cellar at a different location - I always recommend having a generator available to power the pump in case the power goes out and the pump needs to run - in fact I even have a small spare generator in case the one doesn't start and water is filling the sump hole -

[NEfarmgirl]

We are on a well and it is quite a ways from the house. They have ruled out leaking in the pipes and the sewer pipe is completely dry with no water coming out. We have that exposed right now. The water level in the hole exposing the pipe is still at the same level which indicates it is most likely the ground water level. We dug a hole in another area of the property and we hit water about the same depth. Our soil is very saturated right now.

The previous owners slapped things together and we found out how badly after we bought the house and started remodeling. Yes, we did have an inspection, but we learned some things were passed by. The leaking around the pipe would not be be inspector's fault, since he did not see that they failed to seal around it on the exterior of the home. There was caulk on the inside, but that was it. We have sealed both the exterior and interior up and will backfill tomorrow.

The gutters were inspected last fall and are good. We have had torrential downpours and at times the water is just pouring off the side of the house because of the wind driving it into the house so hard. Gutters won't do much for that.

We do have a sump pump in the basement and the pit has had water standing in in pretty consistantly; it does work but we can't hear it so I don't know how often it is pumping water out.

Thanks for your help.

[rambler]

Ground water will have up to 5lbs of pressure behind it in a basement.

'Water spaying' in the basement is not a groundwater leak? If he meant he can see it bubbling up some then I get it, but if it is 'spraying' then something else is going on. 5lbs of pressure is t enough to make water 'spray'.

I live on top of a hill but in clay soils in a wet climate, so have water issues in the basement. Drainage is the key, easy to do while building, expensive and harder after the fact. Back in the 1920s they didn't put in tile, so - I have troubles too.

Somewhere, can be 100s or thousands of feet away, there is a lower spot on your property or a creek or ditch?

Run a tile line from your house to the lower spot. Here in farm country we run many miles of tile to drain out wet farmland, so we are very familiar with running drainage. Its simple, water flows downhill, and 4 inch tile costs about $1.20 a foot to put in, might cost $2 a foot to put in deep as a basement bottom. Takes care of the problem. They probably don't care on your house property, but in farmland in my state there are bad penalties if you don't get approval for drainage before you start....

If you don't have a lower spot, then what the heck was a person putting a house in that location for with a basement, water always gathers in the lowest spots. You need tile with a lift pump, but wherever you dump the water, it will naturally flow slowly underground back to your low spot, recycling back to your pump. So this is a poor option, much better to run thousands of feet with tile and find a lower spot to get the water to dump out on its own, no electric and pump costs/ issues the rest of your life.

Paul

[NEfarmgirl]

I truly believe that a lot of the issues is that the farmer around us had work done to the drainage ditches on two sides of the house. They are both about 1/8th of a mile away. After we moved they removed the trees that were there and had the ground built up around the ditches. We watched them do the dirt work and now the land all slopes towards us. Seeing pictures of the land before the work was done, it appeared to be fairly flat around those ditches with gentle grading down to them. The farmers in our area are now messing with the land to be able to get as much shoved in as possible. A few are using drainage systems, but it has to go somewhere. The guy that farms around us asked us last year to drop our fences and move a fence line so he could run a pivot and have a straight shot when planting. The property line has a slight bend in it and he can't plant the last few rows of his beans/corn because of it. We offered to sell our property to them so he could level everything and farm all of it. We aren't dropping our fence or moving a fence line for him. He refused to buy it and refused to pay his share for a survey. We have not had water issues until the land work was done and I am wondering if contacting an attorney is in order to have them correct the issues by the drainage ditches.

Our neighbor has had far worse water issues in their basement since the ground work was done. Their deck dropped 2 feet last summer and they had their entire basement flooded after a rain. They had a lot of work done in their yard to divert the water away and it goes to the west of us which I think is not helping either.

We are having a contractor come back out to assess the situation and to give us recommendations. There is still the same amount of water sitting in the hole under the sewer pipe this morning and the pipe itself is dry with no water seeping from it. We are running pipe from the sump pump outlet as far from the house as possible now. My brother suggested putting pontoons on the house in case it pops out of the ground at tries to float away.

[rambler]

Ah, water issues, the start of many many wars, too much or too little, its all the same, a war, I want mine and as many gallons as I want, but it don't want a single drop of yours......

Around here the govt requires the county to build up the ditch banks and remove trees from the ditch banks, we have no say in it as farmers or landowners.

The governor just got a bill passed to take 16 to 50 feet of property away from anyone on a ditch bank or stream or river and give it to his hunting buddies, so here the farmers will be shut down soon enough.

Then we can all eat food from Mexico and live happy lives.


In the past 10 years, the phone co put an underground fiber optic and underground copper cable in the ground; after telling them about it and saying they would stay away from the tile, they managed to put the wire directly down a tile line of mine for several 100 feet, wrecking the drainage and making acres of wet ground, ruining $2000 worth of drainage tile....

At roughly the same time, two neighbors away the electric co managed to put an electric pole dead center through the same tile line, wrecking a spot on the tile.

Both of these happened in some very dry years.

When it got back to normal wet years, my field was wrecked, and my small lot owner neighbor uphill of me had 5 sump pumps in their basement and couldn't keep up with the water flowing into their basement.

It was 3 more years until all that was sorted out and discovered. Of course neither the phone co nor the electric company felt they had any responsibility for wrecking private property.

Have you done any digging on your own property? Have you started watering a spot that didnt used to be watered? Is it getting wetter where you are, than what it was a few years ago?

There are many possibilities.

What you need is proper drainage, that will solve it. If there is a ditch over yonder, then you have an outlet, and can get it done.

Paul

[NEfarmgirl]

We did have a leak, but it was not where anyone expected it. The standing water in the hole receded and we were going to backfill, but it started raining again so we left it open. We didn't see any new standing water after it rained; there was a tarp over the hole to keep it dry. Today I ran a load of laundry and for some reason my gut said to check the hole. Sure enough there was a little standing water in it it again so we checked the sewer pipe which was fine. Started digging and found the source. When the previous owners had the basement done they had all new sewer line ran and the vent pipe is outside coming off of the sewer line. If a small amount of water was going through (toilets, handwashing and showers) it was fine, but a large amount at once seemed to do it. It runs about 2 feet off and the pipe leading to the vent sits lower than the sewer pipe? We are assuming that when they filled the trench the line dropped lower than the sewer pipe and has been that way since. The elbow right under the vent pipe broke and if there was a lot of water sent out at once the water backed into the vent pipe some. We think with the vent pipe being outside the wind blowing on it almost constantly, that the pipe was vibrating and eventually it gave way. So now the vent pipe is being raised and repaired. Thankfully we have not had anymore water get into the basement and everything is sealed up again. We are having someone come out to pump the tank and check everything out on the septic system.

[JoePa]

Here is a tip - don't buy or build a house that is located down in a low spot or lower than the surrounding land - you'll have water problems if you try to put a cellar in - I remember driving pass a small field where water in a small ditch flowed down to low spot - you can tell from the surrounding land that water would run - either on top of the surface or under ground to this low spot - doesn't some guy build a small house in the low spot - when I saw that I thought to myself - what the heck is this guy thinking -- well whenever I drive past this house I see a hose sticking out of the cellar window and water being pumped out - buy or build on a small hill and you'll be glad that you did - even if you don't put in a cellar the yard can get so wet you can't hardly use it -