Question: I don't know who else to turn to. We had a Monarch sump pump installed in March 2011. We live in Meadowood, St. Vital. When it was installed, we were told we had a lot of water under the house and they had to work fast to install the sump pit before the hole they dug collapsed. It always smelled musty in our basement. Now that we have the sump pump, the musty smell is gone. We renovated our basement the year before and when we ripped up the carpet and scraped the underlay from the cement floor, amazingly, there were no cracks on the floor, it was in perfect condition.
In the last three years, the pump has run more often than others around the city, from talking to other people, especially in early to late spring and if we had a lot of rain. Usually in August, it slowed down through to winter and does not run in the very coldest months. In the middle of August this summer, the pump started running every half-hour, 24 hours a day and is putting out just over 10 gallons of water each run. It has not stopped and is still running with same frequency, despite virtually no rain in October. We have had the city come out twice now to check to ensure there are no leaks from the water pipes underground or from the fire hydrant that is in front of our house. They even listened where the water pipe goes into the house and also from the basement where the water pipe comes into the house. It has been confirmed there are no leaks anywhere. The city has also confirmed they have checked the sewer-inspection records and sump-pump-problem-reporting database and they have not found any information to suggest the problem is related to the city infrastructure.
The sump pit is 28 inches deep, with three intake holes, six inches from the bottom of the pit, three intake holes 13 inches from the bottom and another three holes 22 inches from the bottom. Once the pit has drained, we can see water pouring in through the intake holes near the bottom of the pit. There is no water coming in from any of the other intake holes. All the proper pipes and fittings are in place and none are leaking. I just don't understand where this underground water is coming from and why so suddenly.
I don't know what is going to happen this winter, whether the pump will eventually slow down or will continue to run. Because the pump was installed to drain to the front of our house we have to drain at least ten feet out, otherwise the water will just flow back towards the house. I am concerned that I am going to have ice build-up problems towards the sidewalk causing problems for the mail and paper delivery.
Can you provide any more insight to this problem? I wish I could just remove the sump because it is causing me a lot of stress.
Thank you, Cathy Bouchard.
Answer: Different areas, with differing soil conditions, may have drastically varying moisture contents, even within the same neighbourhood. While you may never be able to determine why there is so much moisture under and around your home, testing and evaluation by trained professionals may yield some answers.
My first question to you would be: Who were the contractors who installed your sump and pump and what was their reasoning for its installation? I would look to them to see if they thought this would eliminate the damp smell in your basement, which it apparently did, or whether there was another reason. I would also ask if they had this same experience when using this remedial action in other homes, and what they did about it. There is a chance they have done damage to weeping tiles or something else underneath your basement floor slab during or after installation, which is causing the excessive moisture. Even though that would likely have shown up soon after installation, it is still a slight possibility. It is not that unusual to install a simple perforated sump to help collect excessive water under a home, but it should reduce the soil moisture collected over time, not increase it.
While it may simply be unlucky timing on your part, the summers of 2012 and 2013 were two of the driest in recent memory. While the sump pump may have removed a large majority of the residual ground water under your basement floor shortly after installation, this moisture may not have been replenished due to the extremely dry weather. If you simply have a very high water table in the soil where your home was built, which is a possibility, the near-drought of the following years may have served to prevent the normal state of excessively high soil moisture. The return to more normal snowfall and rain this year may have served to saturate the dry soil and now you are experiencing more typical pump functioning. Your final note about wishing you did not have the sump installed would have ensured you continued to have a damp-smelling basement, and possibly more problems from all that water remaining in the soil.
While I commend you on making this enquiry to me, I will now tell you who you should really turn to. Professional geotechnical engineers are educated to evaluate soil conditions and provide recommendations related to those conditions. Their work may require soil sampling outside the home or beneath your floor slab, and other diagnostic testing, but should yield some answers to your overactive sump pump situation.
Ari Marantz is the owner of Trained Eye Home Inspection Ltd. and the past president of the Canadian Association of Home & Property Inspectors -- Manitoba (cahpi.mb.ca). Questions can be emailed to the address below. Ari can be reached at 204-291-5358 or check out his website at trainedeye.ca.
trainedeye@iname.com
