Hi all,

Last Friday I had a strong rainfall and after several hours I heard my backup sump pump alarm buzzing ... so I went to check it and I could see both main pump (1/3 HP) and backup pump (battery operated ) working continuously !!! with the water level almost at the edge of my sump pit (about 20 inch diameter and about 26 inch deep). The water was coming in from the 2 weeping tile pipes at a very high flow rate. Fortunately, I had a 1/2 HP pump available since I planned to replace the current 1/3 HP and 5 years old main pump ... so I just connected a flex discharged pipe to it (out to my garage) and helped the sump pit for 30-40 minutes or so ? until the power went off just to amplify my terror ! So here I’m, with a flash light in my month, and manually helping the backup pump to keep up with the flow ... I believe I have more white hair now! It stopped raining in the meantime + the power came on and off ... but I manage to avoid a flood in my basement. Next day in the afternoon I checked with some other neighbours (they have a 2-story house too) and I was amazed that no water was coming in their pit at all ! I went back and checked my pit again and the main pump was cycling every other 2-3 min. but no water was coming from the 2 weeping tile pipes, but rather from beneath one of them only ! (there is a gap around both drain pipes ) Is this the water table ???. Other note: there is water under my sump pit black liner bottom. As far as I know my pumps discharge to a city storm system and I have weeping tiles around the house. All my downspouts have 4 foot of extension, the back of the house has a concrete patio, the half of the front is protected by the garage, and both sides of the house are having landscape with a bad grade I think now ... So far it seems that the rainfall combined with a rising water table just overflowed my pumps and pit for a while. !? What do you think ?

I’m looking for your opinion on next issues:

1.I’ll replace the 1/3 pump with the 1/2 HP . My discharge pipe to city storm system is 1 ½ inch pipe. If I also connect the old 1/3 pump, will this line be able to handle all the pumps ? Or I should discharge one of them to outside driveway ?

2.Why do I have water under the sump pit liner ? Is that ok ? what can I do about it ?

3.Why I still have water coming from the gap bellow one of the weeping tile pipe ? I’m draining the water table ? What if I seal all these gaps and I’ll have only the weeping tile pipes to bring the water in ? Any negative effect on the foundation or basement floor ?

4.Should I do something about house sides in terms of the bad grade ? Left side has only grass and no concrete around and the right side has little evergreen trees with mulch and a concrete side walk ; the mulch level is bellow the side walk and I seems to be a good water trap/reservoir next to my wall ! Any ideas how can I change this situation and slope the grade away from house, or seal these zones ??

5.The house is 10 years old and I owned it for the last 6 years. In my first 4 years I had no problem but a similar situation happened last year in July! How strange is this? How come my neighbours have no similar problem?

6.I’ll verify the check valves too.

Your help is highly appreciated since I don’t think I can survive a third experience like this ... now I don’t really know what to do since I don’t know the root cause !

Many thanks in advance !!

GeoT