So I'm out enjoying the day in a house purchased last month. House is 8 years old.
Decided I'd take advantage of the nice weather before work up in here in Southwest Ontario and start putting up a fence for my pooch who is really hating life on a leash!
Anyways, as I'm digging a post hole I start hearing this gurgling and sure enough water comes to the surface at my feet. I look out maybe 10 feet infront of me and there is the rest of the water coming out of the sump pump pipe.
So fine, the pipe is cracked. No biggie. I'm just having issues with the fact the pipe sticks out a bit from the ground kinda on the neighbors property and has a pool hose attached to discharge it over near the pool some 35' away.
This is something that definitely needs to be rectified but I'm kinda stumped on what to do. I have like 150' to the back or to the front of the property to route this drain away. I have a really decent slope away from the house atleast within the 20' or so of it but my soil is basically clay so letting it squirt out on the ground is not the greatest idea. I have already ran my downspouts away from the house and I find the sump pump is running less frequently with rain. When we moved in, none of the spouts directed water away from the house.
On our side of the road is a culvert of some time, and every time I checked it's filled with water, maybe 4' below the surface? On the other side of our road is a ditch/farm drain (farm fields on the other side of the road). This culvert is slighty below road grade on our side of the road so I can't envision the sump pump discharging there seeing as the water level is somewhat high in it. It seems higher than the water in the ditch/drain.
What are my options? Do I run this discharge out to the backyard? Just hire somebody? Sue the bozo who did this (mind you, the neighbors house is probably a year or two old, hence the reason for cheating on the sump discharge.
My next project on the go is a water powered sump pump for backup but I'd like to figure out what to do with this problem too before winter sets in.
I have enough things on the go and am tempted to contract this out but I really don't have a clue what to expect when I get a quote to route this thing away.
Just looking for some thoughts to fix it myself and any ideas what anyone would think this would cost if they came across anything like this before. (in ontario, canada)
Note: The culvert I mentioned seems to be shared by the two propeties (has a grating over it) and even though the sump pump discharge ends at the neighbors property is does have a hose on it to discharge back on my property. Where the pipe is is probably 150' from their house. Their house is sloped pretty good too and that pipe is basically in the corner of their backyard (their house is set closer to the road than mine). I'm not worried about flooding them, just looking for the best way to fix this.
Thanks!
Sump pump discharge can really be a source of irritation. It's a little hard to picture what you're working with there but a picture or two can tell the whole story. If you can shoot a few pics....post them here for us to see.
I'll see what I can do for pics there tomorrow.....
Basically, sump pump discharges out perpendicular to the house. The end of the pipe is above ground at the lot line of my neighbor. The original owner just hooked up a 25' pool hose, attached it to the end of the sump discharge and snaked it toward the backyard.
My guess is that the pipe cracked because that hose froze up? Logical guess. The hole the water seeped out of when the sump was on today was an ankle breaker.
The soil where I'm installing the fence actually isn't too bad. I'm not having as much trouble as I thought using the post hole digger (manual). I know the rest of the yard is tricky. The house is on a clay area.
Where the pool hose is now, goes and discharges on the surface and has stayed somewhat wet due to the rain we've seen the past two weeks or so.
I'm thinking a french drain might atleast spread this water out.Part of me wants to hire it out but I'm cheap and like to think I'm a half decent do it yourselfer and like to save the cash when I can do the job.
Like I said I'll see what I can come up with tomorrow. Any ideas appreciated.
Here they are.....we did get a little rain overnight, the side of the house with the pictures (my garage side) was sloppy down on the picture taken by the pool to the front yard.
I'm just thinking of adding a 90 to repair the hole and just run this to the backyard .....
I'd like to incorporate it into some sort of landscape feature but it's just not gonna drain well anyway.
This side of the house as you can see was built up as you see from the backyard pic. The neighbors yard isn't finished at all and yet my yard prolly sits a foot higher in spots.....good for me! LOL
I have a similar situation (except the previous owner ran it into the town sewer line within the house).
I can see from the pictures why it was done the way it was done previously. Probably forgotten when the new house was built.
In my case, to rectify mine, I'm going to need to rent a trencher and run the pipe the length of the yard to the back. Being in a similar environment, we both (you and I) need to be a bit concerned about frost.
An alternative option I had looked at was to dig a pit, plate a barrel in it full of holes, and surround it with bolders, course gravel then cover. The sump would discharge into the barrel and leach out into the ground. For clay (which I have ~45ft deep), not going to work out too well. I'll be looking into the trencher a bit more and probably go that round. I am delaying due to other projects including a new garage and if the wife gets her way, and inground pool.
Well I guess my thinking is not too far off.
For now I think I might just fix the pipe and finish the fence.....As you can see from the pic I have quite a few trees in the spot where I need to run. So those gotta go to do this.
If I rent a mini excavator I should be able to pop the line where that wood retaining wall is and run it out to the backyard more and fill it over.
Not the kind of work I'm interested in taking on but I could see someone charging a fair bit to run like 200' of trench.......
I just moved from a house where the soil was loamy/sandy. I'm not sure how much my sump pump even ran. LOL.
I keep mulling this over....
In the middle picture, I have a downspout not shown that I need to reroute away from the house more.....
If I repair that sump pipe and upsize it, if I 't' in the down spout into it to drain through the pressure treated wood wall.
For now :I think I'll pop it underground through that wall seeing as it's out of site right now. If I get it sloped right I'll just extend the pipe away more to the ground.
I almost want to consider throwing in a couple dry wells in the area facing that wood barrier too and just let the water trickle in.
There is basically no chance for heavy traffic in that area if I did that and when I get around to it I can redig it up and tie back into it and run the french drain to the backyard after I get the trees stumps out of the way.
Is that plausible to tie them into together?
My main concern with teeing your down spout in with your sump pump line would be the junk that will come off the roof and into that pipe. It will add extra back pressure on the sump pump and as time goes on.... Will cause issues.
My main gutters on the roof are ~36ft from the ground. I still get shingle sand and other stuff in my downspout when we get really heavy rains.
I'll agree on the not tieing the roof drains into the sump system. We collect the front side of our roofs (about a 1000 sqft) into 2 large barrels. The primary barrel has a screen on top and its amazing the amounf of shingle sand, needles and bugs that fill up that screen.
I like the idea of a dry well of some type. With proper direction of the roof downspouts, the only time you might over-run the 'well' would be during some nasty rain storms.. in which case there would be flooding all over anyhow so who cares if your 'well' is flooding over and running towards the neighbours..
Would it be worth putting in some type of heat wire to thaw the drain line to the well in the spring if needed ?
I'll agree on the not tieing the roof drains into the sump system. We collect the front side of our roofs (about a 1000 sqft) into 2 large barrels. The primary barrel has a screen on top and its amazing the amounf of shingle sand, needles and bugs that fill up that screen.
I like the idea of a dry well of some type. With proper direction of the roof downspouts, the only time you might over-run the 'well' would be during some nasty rain storms.. in which case there would be flooding all over anyhow so who cares if your 'well' is flooding over and running towards the neighbours..
Would it be worth putting in some type of heat wire to thaw the drain line to the well in the spring if needed ?
Heating wire would get really expensive to run, really quickly.
Also noted, the OP mentioned they are dealing with clay, so anything below grade will not let water out too well.
Not teeing in....check. Makes sense. Didn't think about the shingle/dirt mess. I'll just run 'em side by side and go from there.
We got a good amount of rain overnight. Had a swampy mess out in the front yard and one in the middle of the backyard.
Never nice to look at.
Definitely gonna have to consider a dry well in the areas where no one really goes to let the sump pool into it and go from there. There's nothing really accessible yard wise on the sump discharge side of the house where the pool deck is so that'll be a good place to start for now.
It's clay. It's the nature of the beast. As long as the water is not at the house I'll have to live with it. The pool of water in the middle of the backyard is coverering a stone/cement walkway that's obviously sitting below everywhere else.
Moving the water away from the house is my biggest concern. I know it's not going to matter if I change the grade of the land in certain areas because the underlying clay isn't going to help.
I've been nosing around the net and actually found an intering way of improving drainage in clay by basically coring holes all over, refilling with compost and stuff and then the worms start doing there work and creating all the tunnels to these compost holes. Improves soil aeration and can improve drainage.
That's a little ambitious if you ask me. LOL.
Hey, how about landscaping in one of those fancy ponds ?
Thought of that.....mosquito pool the wife said. LOL
Tags: sump, pump, discharge, from house, sump pump, away from, away from house, flooding over, side road, some type
