Hello,
I recently bought a home that seems to have a drainage problem. The sump pump is brand new. The sump looks to hold about 20 gallons. When the pump goes off, it drains all the water out of the sump. When I go out to the street, to watch the flow from the discharge pipe, 20 gallons is NOT discharging onto the street.
The water quickly builds back up in the sump, and the pump kicks on soon after.
I did a little troubleshooting on my own. I used my Shop Vac to manually suck out the water from the sump. I did this for approx an hour straight. This slowed down the drainage into the sump, and the sump pump would kick on every 30-40 minutes, as opposed to every 5ish minutes. This proves that there's a leak somewhere in the discharge pipe, correct?
So, I dug a hole over the weekend, to where the sump pump pipe meets the discharge pipe, right next to the house. The soil underneath the piping was pretty wet... There is also a tree close to the pipe, and there was a pretty large root that went straight to the pipe, and actually wrapped around the pipe, but I did not see any penetration at this point. Roto Rooter guys came over about a month ago and snaked the pipe out. They did discover some roots in the pipe, pretty close to this tree (I didn't dig out very far, because I don't have a very efficient shovel!).
Something else I discovered... When I dug down to the pipe, I waited for the pump to kick on... When it shut off, I could hear water rushing back toward the house. Seems like there may be an object blocking the flow? This might explain the lack of water making it out to the street?
Sorry for the rant... I'm just hoping someone here can give me some sort of direction, as I'm a new home owner, and I have no idea what to do (I don't even know who to call about this... ha!).
Thanks in advance!
Joe
I recently bought a home that seems to have a drainage problem. The sump pump is brand new. The sump looks to hold about 20 gallons. When the pump goes off, it drains all the water out of the sump. When I go out to the street, to watch the flow from the discharge pipe, 20 gallons is NOT discharging onto the street.
The water quickly builds back up in the sump, and the pump kicks on soon after.
I did a little troubleshooting on my own. I used my Shop Vac to manually suck out the water from the sump. I did this for approx an hour straight. This slowed down the drainage into the sump, and the sump pump would kick on every 30-40 minutes, as opposed to every 5ish minutes. This proves that there's a leak somewhere in the discharge pipe, correct?
So, I dug a hole over the weekend, to where the sump pump pipe meets the discharge pipe, right next to the house. The soil underneath the piping was pretty wet... There is also a tree close to the pipe, and there was a pretty large root that went straight to the pipe, and actually wrapped around the pipe, but I did not see any penetration at this point. Roto Rooter guys came over about a month ago and snaked the pipe out. They did discover some roots in the pipe, pretty close to this tree (I didn't dig out very far, because I don't have a very efficient shovel!).
Something else I discovered... When I dug down to the pipe, I waited for the pump to kick on... When it shut off, I could hear water rushing back toward the house. Seems like there may be an object blocking the flow? This might explain the lack of water making it out to the street?
Sorry for the rant... I'm just hoping someone here can give me some sort of direction, as I'm a new home owner, and I have no idea what to do (I don't even know who to call about this... ha!).
Thanks in advance!
Joe