My 100 year old house has two floor drains. One is near the main drain, the other on the opposite side of the basement.
The one away from the drain fills with water, slowly, when and after a wet period of weather. The floor in that area as well as along the adjacent wall gets wet as well (no standing water, but clearly saturated).
My assumption is that the subject floor drain is connected to the exterior drainage tile. I also assume that this drainage tile can no longer drain for what ever reason. There is a makeshift shallow sump pit about 12” aside of this floor drain. This would also fill with water after a rainy period.
I finally decided to try and fix the issue (as best as possible without spending $16,000 to waterproof the exterior) and in the course of breaking up the floor around the sump pit and drain, I discovered a 3” clay pipe protuding under the basement wall (no more than 2” below the former level of the basement floor.
My plan, originally, was to try and link a new deeper sump pit with the floor drain by adding a 4” PVC connection to hopefully drain the weeping tile. Now that I found this other 3” pipe under the wall, I wonder if this is the main connec tion to the weeping tile?
And since it is only like an inch below where the floor would be, how do I ensure it can drain after I patch the concrete floor?
Any ideas or tips? Anyone ever seen something like this before?
Replies
Clay tile(pipe) was commonly used as perimeter(French) drains before the age of plastics. They can be subject to breaking and filling up with roots and sediment. Not sure what you mean by "weeping tile". Chances are the perimeter drains are clogged up or broken or the outlet is blocked and a sump pump pit was added since the perimeter drains were no longer working. It can be possible to clean out the perimeter drains if they aren't broken up, Roto-Rooter. If you have a properly working positive flow perimeter drain system, you may not need a sump pump. Since you seem to have water collecting under the basement slab, your existing drains aren't working and you wouldn't want to pump into them.