I've got .... water

[Mike058]

My first choice would be to keep the water out of the house. I wouldn't bother trying to plug it, I'd look to giving it a better path away or around the house. I hope that's possible in your situation. Otherwise you're looking at some kind of sump pump system. Maybe an outdoor sump? Dig a sump a foot or two deeper than your foundation on the "wet" side of the house. Hopefully it fills with water that you can pump around and away from the house (and the neighbors too). If it works, you can build a small pump house to contain the noise and keep critters (2 and 4 legged) out of the sump.

 

[MarkV]

Mike that is a tuff situation you have run into. It sure is sounding like a spring. Funny it did not show itself during the construction process. I wonder if it is possible to find the source point of the spring and somehow pipe the flow to the old hand pump well, assuming that well is no longer used for domestic water.

One thing about water is it will flow to the point of least resistance. Would it be possible to dig a large hole as close as is reasonable to the foundation and fill it with stone like a dry well? The thought being to create a point of least resistance from which to pipe the water away from the house.

If it is at all practical I would rather attack the problem from outside the foundation rather than depend on sump pumps. My brother had a similar problem and it would keep the sump pump running pretty much 24/7. He burned up three pumps in one year each time causing a new flood in his basement.

MarkV

 

[EddieWalker]

I like to do things as simple as possilbe and work with the natural laws over technology whenever possible.

Now that we know it's a spring and just terrible bad luck that you built on top of it, I think the only option available to you is to direct the water away from the house as soon as possible before you suffer structural failure from an unstable foundation. Such as the house sinking into the ground.

One thing that I just thought of is your homeowners insurance. I doubt you are covered and asking might cause more problems then it solves. If they find out that you have a spring under your home, they might drop you before it gets to a point that you file a claim against them.

Since the spring is coming to the surface, it's under preasure and you need to release that preasure. Water will always flow to the area of least resistance, right now, that happens to be the surface under your home.

A picture of your home and the setting would help, but regardless, I think you need to do ALLOT of digging. My first thought is an open trench. Big, wide and deep. Decide what part of the house it will have the least effect on apperance and where you can slope it away from the house. Dig it several feet deeper then the foundation and give it a very gentle slope that is very, very wide. I did mention removing allot of dirt. LOL

This might take off the preasure and lower the water table to the point that it allows the water to seep into the trench sideways through the soil without having to go under the foundation. The deeper the trench, the dryer the soil will be under the foundation.

If this fails, it then becomes step one. Next, I'd tunnel under the buiding and put in a drain system that feeds to the trench. It's allot of miserable work, but at least a drain would be constant and never need any repair. Under a house, it also won't need any maintenance.

A sump pump will fail sooner or later and will be a constant drain on electricity.

This is something that you can hire some high school kids to do and pay a decent wage. Hire a plumber or contractor and you are looking at $100 an hour. Pay three or four kids $20 an hour and you'll have it done in a day.

Keep it simple and realize that it's something that has to be done. Just commit to doing it and stick with it. Eventually, you'll get it done, even though it has headache written all over it.

Good luck,
Eddie

 

[toy]

Several years ago I ran into a water problem when building a garrage. When I dug out the footer water gushed into the footer and completly filled it up before I could get it poured, and I knew that wouldn't work. To solve the problem I dug a ditch around the outside of the footer and just a little below the footer and then dug a ditch out to the creek. I put 6" black plastic drain pipe with the holes in it in the ditch around the footer and out to the creek. I then covered the ditch back up. Since the ditch was lower than the footer the water ran away from the footer and into the drainiage ditch and out to the creek and that solved my water problems. I had a small excavator dig the ditch for me and the operator of the excavator had the ditch practically dug in the time it took me to go get the pipe to go in it.

 

[riptides]

An update for you all.

We ended up tackling the problem from both outside and inside the crawl space.

A contractor was hired to do the miserable work of getting into and out of a 24 inch crawl space. We tiled, graveled and channeled the water from the inside perimeter of the crawl to two new sump pumps.

On the outside, I dug around the perimeter and found my original well line that now only feeds one other building. This line was found to have a small leak in it. I will now abandon all original lines to all other buildings. Wonder what two plumbers pressure checked when they took my money? In any case, I have another project that has now "sprung" out of this one. I need to dig and tap into my new line that services the farm house and get water to my other buildings. Hindsight, I should have done that when I did the new line, but we did not.

The contractor came in on a weekend, and it rained (poured) late on Sunday, when they were still laying plastic down. The system seems to work and the water is directed more efficiently to the pumps now. It has far less travel time, before it is out.

 

[MarkV]

Do you think the leaky well line is causing the water in the crawl space? Doesn’t sound like a fun job in a tight crawl space.

MarkV

 

[riptides]

Do you think the leaky well line is causing the water in the crawl space? Doesn稚 sound like a fun job in a tight crawl space.

MarkV

Ahhh... yes it did not help. We turned the well pump off, while working on the crawl. When the rain came it still went into the crawl. It did clean the pipes off, after they dried in the sun, the leak was spotted.

Not enough IMHO to send the plumber my bill. Plus an area of the crawl not directly influenced by the pipe was also having issues.

Just kind of disappointed that whatever pressure checks they did, did not reveal the leak.

 

[riptides]

Do you think the leaky well line is causing the water in the crawl space? Doesn稚 sound like a fun job in a tight crawl space.

MarkV

Ahhh... yes it did not help. We turned the well pump off, while working on the crawl. When the rain came it still went into the crawl. It did clean the pipes off, after they dried in the sun, the leak was spotted.

Not enough IMHO to send the plumber my bill. Plus an area of the crawl not directly influenced by the pipe was also having issues.

Just kind of disappointed that whatever pressure checks they did, did not reveal the leak.