My house has water problems with the basement. Here's what the entrance to my basement looks like. When I get a really heavy rain storm, water manages to rise up and start seeping in under the door. Given an hour I have a real mess on my hands (like today)
I have a sump pump hooked up underneath the black cover in the picture. It's a simple automatic pump I bought at the home depot. It sits inside a 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled in it and gravel in the bottom. This bucket sits in a pit filled with gravel. Here's what it looks like when you lift the cover
The pump has a garden hose hooked up to it. The hose then runs through some pvc pipes and into the back yard. The power cord runs into the house. Currently it's attached to a power cord but I plan on adding a power outlet next to the door that it will plug into. Here's a picture..
So that's my setup, which works well enough for regular amounts of rain. But here are the two situations my setup fails:
- Flash flood warning level rains.
- Power outage.
So here are my questions:
- What am I doing wrong?
- What should I do to make things right?
Best Answer
From the looks of it, water could run right around your grate to the door. If the walkway is sloped toward the grate on both sides, that would probably help when the rain is light, but when it is heavy it will run right around it.
I would install a grate that runs across the whole width of the walkway. Under the grate, I would have a trench about a foot deep with about 6" of gravel. In the middle of the trench, I would dig a hole another 24" or so deep and put your bucket with the sump pump in there.
It would also help to either move the trench closer to the door or grade the walkway so that the couple feet from the drain to the door slopes toward the drain. If you move it, it should at least be inside the "drip line" from the eves/overhang on the house.
Another option, if possible (hard to tell from the picture) would be to cover the walkway.