We "fixed" 95% of the issue by simply re-grading our driveway and the land around the house so that water no longer rushing toward the house foundation and spilling into the basement. We also installed a "french drain" system this past summer which helped tremendously and made a huge improvement. Now the water in heavy rains runs off in the street where it is supposed to and not in our basement! Yeah! We both felt so great at our success of having a dry basement.
And then came more rain...the ground across WNC has become so saturated that this past fall and winter of '09-'10 we began to get water seeping up through the floor of our concrete basement. Bummer we still had a water issue. Although water seeping in is much more manageable than water rushing in like before our re-grading and french drain project. Glenn still insisted on addressing this new seepage issue so that our basement could continue to be bone dry and so that we would not have to continue shop-vacuuming the seepage. This would require he thought...A Sump Hole.
The previous owners had installed a sump hole system and left us there sump pump and float, but that sump hole is in one of the driest corners of our basement...hum. We needed a new one placed to collect the seeping water from the saturated ground. Thus begins our search for a jack hammer.
Luckily a good friend and great guy who works construction was able to lend us a handheld jack hammer, yes! The rather large Makita jack hammer arrived at our house late thursday night, we had it for the weekend. Glenn of course wanted to start as soon as possible and made a run to Lowe's for some extra items we needed. Another friend of ours let us borrow his Skil saw, which we needed to make the initial cut into the concrete (in the shape of a square so as to avoid splintering cracks in the concrete). All we needed other than the Skil saw, and jack hammer was a concrete blade for Skil saw ($3), a respirator ($29.87 the priciest item), a kit that included safety googles and ear plugs ($6.87 ), a glass cutter ($3.98 ), a bag of quick-crete ($3.85) and a PVC collar to line the hole. It turned out that the diameter of the hole needed to be 10 inches so that our sump pump and float could fit and switch on automatically. Well Lowe's does not carry 10 inch PVC pipe so we callled the plumbers in the phone book to see if any of them had some PVC scrapes (all we needed was about 12-14 inches long of 10 inch diameter PVC). Well no one had any 10 inch so we decided to fashion a 5 gallon bucket as the sleeve for the hole. And oddly enough a 5 gallon bucket on the inside measures exactly 10 inches in diameter! I know this is getting really geeky! Please don't feel bad about not continuing to read the rest of this post - I don't blame you (I promise I will try to post something more interesting soon!)
At this point all Glenn had to do was cut off the bottom of the bucket with the skil saw and viola we had a sleeve to line the hole! Incidentally, we just happened to have about 6 spare 5 gallon buckets sitting around for odd projects such as these, so we did not factor the cost of the bucket into our project budget.
Next step - measuring and cutting the square and 10 inch diameter circle inside it with the skil saw.
Next step - Out comes the Jack Hammer! Bust up the concrete and get going on our hole. Well it turned out that the concrete floor of our basement is only about 2 inches deep (it should be more I think?) and under than is the gound, which here in WNC is red compacted clay earth. This meant the the jack hammering would go faster than anticipated. The jack hammer was extremely helpful though in breaking up the harded clay earth and soon enough we had our hole, dug down about 14 inches or so.
Next step - place the bucket sleeve inside the square hole and back fill the corners with dirt then concrete over the top.
Next step - which didn't go as planned, was to cut a hole in the glass window near the sump hole through which we can run the sump pump hose. This hose will carry the water outside into the yard, which will then run into the street drain. The $3.98 glass cutting tool cut a hole but it wasn't pretty. I guess you get what you pay for! Instead of a circle hole in the window it's more like a pentagon shape and has splintering cracks. We may try and silicone the edges and glue the cracks.
Time - it took from about 3pm in the afternoon until about 6pm, not too bad. Total cost was about - $50.
Now we shall see if it all works out. What would be classic is that if we have a dry year and don't get any rain to test it out!
Once again sorry for this boring and geeky post, but Home Projects can be fun and satisfying when they work out!
