Sump pump drainage

[polarbearfans]

Anyone have a sump pump? Where does it drain? I think our underground pipe is busted and my husband wants to run it above ground away from the house... Not sure how that works with that much water.

We just found out our bathroom has been leaking for who knows how long because of 5 nail holes in a pipe that was dry walled over years ago. The first 6 months of home ownership have sucked so far in repairs

[mrs.jacinthe]

My parents have one (in Ohio). Theirs drains into their septic tank leach field.

[Susie]

Ours dumps into the backyard, under the dining room window. Let me see if I can find a picture. We often have a puddle against the house, which is not ideal. We're looking into solutions, including re-grading and/or a french drain.

ETA:  It's the black pipe under the window.  (Insert standard "picture is from 2009" disclaimer here.)


You can't see the pipe in this picture, but maybe a little more context:  pipe is hidden by the bush on the right hand side.

[lavender444]

Sept 22, 2014 19:19:23 GMT -5 Susie said:

Ours dumps into the backyard, under the dining room window. Let me see if I can find a picture. We often have a puddle against the house, which is not ideal. We're looking into solutions, including re-grading and/or a french drain.

ETA:  It's the black pipe under the window.  (Insert standard "picture is from 2009" disclaimer here.)


You can't see the pipe in this picture, but maybe a little more context:  pipe is hidden by the bush on the right hand side.

I'm no expert, but shouldn't that drain farther away from your house? It looks like the water just goes right back to the foundation. 


We we don't get water in our sump pit so we don't have a pump, but a few doors down from us gets major water during the summer from Golf course run-off. Their water runs down a pipe in their side yard, then drains out to the gutters on the street. 

[polarbearfans]

Sept 22, 2014 19:19:23 GMT -5 Susie said:

Ours dumps into the backyard, under the dining room window. Let me see if I can find a picture. We often have a puddle against the house, which is not ideal. We're looking into solutions, including re-grading and/or a french drain.

ETA:  It's the black pipe under the window.  (Insert standard "picture is from 2009" disclaimer here.)

You can't see the pipe in this picture, but maybe a little more context:  pipe is hidden by the bush on the right hand side.

This is basically what ours is doing since the pipe has a space between the ground pipe, and I think our ground pipe is compromised... Our sump pump sees a lot of action. When we first bought the house and had a broken pump, we have to manually flush it every couple hours... That was fun living 45 minutes away :/ it rained for the first 4 days, and I was convinced the house was haunted (still am) so that was scary having to hang out in the basement.

We are thinking of adding a tube to run it away from the house. The grading is decent. I just worry about the water going too close to the house. I've been paranoid since the first house we wanted to buy had bowed walls due to poor drainage. (Ohio)

Thanks for the pics. Very similar setup. I should go look at the area more often to see if we have puddles.

[menrandes]

Ours used to dump into the backyard, but with the grading of the yard it would just end up back into the pump.
This spring my husband set it up so it would drain into our rain barrel system. I highly recommend that especially in the summer.

[auntie]

Underground is best. Especially if you live in an area with cold winters.

Mine currently drains out the side of the house near the HVAC unit, through a long black hose and into a swale that runs between houses. I'd love to bury it and line or landscape the swale with water plants, but my yard is so damned full of rocks this would be an ordeal. It's not ideal, but the hose allows me to move it so that it doesn't soak or erode one area.

One downside to above ground, aside from remembering to not run the hose over, is that it has frozen solid a couple times. If you don't clear the hose, you could potentially burn out the pump. I keep a spare hose around in case I need to switch it out. I've only had to do this a couple times in 15 years; I live in zone 6.

The hose broke off once and was draining too close to the house, which caused the pump to run continuously like some sort of recirculation pump. I imagine the risk would be related to the amount of rain or runoff the pump has to manage.

[polarbearfans]

Sept 23, 2014 4:58:25 GMT -5 auntie said:

Underground is best. Especially if you live in an area with cold winters.

Mine currently drains out the side of the house near the HVAC unit, through a long black hose and into a swale that runs between houses. I'd love to bury it and line or landscape the swale with water plants, but my yard is so damned full of rocks this would be an ordeal. It's not ideal, but the hose allows me to move it so that it doesn't soak or erode one area.

One downside to above ground, aside from remembering to not run the hose over, is that it has frozen solid a couple times. If you don't clear the hose, you could potentially burn out the pump. I keep a spare hose around in case I need to switch it out. I've only had to do this a couple times in 15 years; I live in zone 6.

The hose broke off once and was draining too close to the house, which caused the pump to run continuously like some sort of recirculation pump. I imagine the risk would be related to the amount of rain or runoff the pump has to manage.

I want to replace all the underground piping on both sides of the house. Our gutters drain into the pipes too. Unfortunately that is a project that will have to wait until next year. We are just having too many repairs this year.

I really worry about the pipe freezing. Winters in Ohio are crazy. Running heat in the morning, AC in the afternoon. My husband is in denial that the sump pump runs a lot. He feels the pump filled so much when we first bought the house was because it was spring. Rain is rain no matter the season! We've had heavy rains for longer recently lol

[Susie]

Sept 22, 2014 22:02:12 GMT -5 lavender444 said:

Sept 22, 2014 19:19:23 GMT -5 Susie said:

Ours dumps into the backyard, under the dining room window. Let me see if I can find a picture. We often have a puddle against the house, which is not ideal. We're looking into solutions, including re-grading and/or a french drain.

I'm no expert, but shouldn't that drain farther away from your house? It looks like the water just goes right back to the foundation. 

Hence the bolded.

It's not what I'd have come up with if I was around when the house was being built almost 30 years ago, but I wasn't, so now it's just somewhere on the endless list of things to improve.

[sjh722]

I am 95% sure ours drains underground into the septic field. Our house is built on a hill, and there's nothing coming out on the patio (where the line would run from the basement), but that would be in line to run out to the septic.

[who22]

I don't have one now but I did at my apartment. It hooked into our sewer line that went into the city sewer line.

[dr.girlfriend]

Ours drains above ground, with like a spout into our garden. Our basement only floods when there's a hurricane or flash flood-type situation, though, so I haven't seen it in action yet since we just got the sump pump installed this summer.

[megstoo]

Ours also dumps in the backyard but in the 4 years we've been living here it's never once run. Ours is also in the garage though so it by some odd chance it were to run and stop it would overflow into the garage.

[raangoli]

Ours is not-so-smartly placed right next the side of the house - right above where the sump is. We got a quote to replace and re-line the pump last month and it included a line item to run the drain away from the house towards the front lawn/street. It was expensive (like $800) to do that, when we could easily DIY that. It's on our list of "things to do when we're bored someday".