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I've had some threads about dehumidifiers but today I finally took a look at my sump pump pit. I've been running the dehumidifier for a week or two now. Some water goes in and it's fine. I had rain last weekend and there wasn't enough to really fill the thing and now I kinda see why.
First there looked to be some sort of broken flower pot pits in the pit so I took them out. No biggie. then I saw something black. there's a pipe with water going into the pit. There's also a hole in the pit taking water somewhere. I have no idea where this water is coming from or going. It's slow, very slow but obvious once I kicked some dirt in. We're talking lazy river type of flow not jet stream, I've seen toilets probably leak more than this.
I have public water and sewer. I know where the main water lines are and see no connections at all that would go into the basement. As far as I know there's no output of water anywhere outside the house. To note there is no radon in the house. The water level does not appear to be rising but I think the hole has capacity for the discharge from the dehumidifier which might explain why the sump pump hasn't gone on.
The date of construction I would say was late 1960's. I would argue the discharge might be a leech field somewhere but I'm not sure where the water is coming from. It's really low amounts of water, I'll probably clean the thing next week.
It sounds like you have a french drain system that directs water from under the foundation and into the pit. When the pit fills, the pump whisks it away.
That would depend on where said house is, when it was built, and if it was properly permitted/built to code- if enforced, etc.
Some foundation drain systems that use sumps are pumped into the sewer system, storm water system, or to the surface some distance away from the structure. Lots of possibilities!
My old house in Brighton NY was on the top of a hill. The street was roughly 15 feet below the house. The sump was drained into a hidden exit at the lower corner of the property. No pump. And we really needed the sump...the upstream basin wall collapsed when the home was being built. It was fixed with a couple of flying buttresses and the sump. Worked fine.
In my previous home I had a sump pit outside the basement, and it took the water from the french drains around the outside of the house and pumped it to a popup further out in the yard. This is the only thing that kept the basement from flooding in extremely heavy rain (every few years kind of rain). I was looking with some plumbers to run a pipe from the pit out to the curb, as I had a couple of sump pump failures and needed something better. This sounds like a similar thing.
My original sump pit has two pipes running into it: one from the washer/utility sink setup and the other from the drain for the stairwell just outside the door. That sump empties into the municipal waste water system and has since 1959. The second sump pump in the finished half of the basement has two drainage tubes that empty to it from the system designed to keep that area dry. It pumps water up and out of the basement and then turns and runs down to a grate at the bottom of the sloping front lawn. We tried to drain it to the back yard at first but there wasn't enough room or sufficient drainage. I miss my setup at the old house where I could pump right out into the VDOT ditch - sweet!
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It's slow, very slow but obvious once I kicked some dirt in. We're talking lazy river type of flow not jet stream, I've seen toilets probably leak more than this.
