Fishbowl, Part 2

Woo hoo, I fixed the water problem (for now?) and there is no longer standing water in the window well. The rain has also really died down, but I like to think that what I just did took care of most of the problem. That would only be fair, since I probably caused the problem to begin with.

Back a few months, I replaced the old sump pump. At the same time, I installed a check valve at the pump because there was not one previously, and a large amount of the water pumped out would drain right back into the sump well. This was done at a time when we still had freezing weather, and once I added the check valve the water became trapped in the discharge hose since it couldn't drain back into the well like it had always done before. Well, the water in the hose froze and I had to cut the discharge hose to get the ice cleared so the pump could work. Once it was cleared, I just placed a larger diameter hose over it and directed it towards the low ground next to the house. What I didn't notice until now is that the thing was blowing water out right towards the house - about 1/3 of the water being discharged came right back to the house, right at the window well. After rigging up a temporary "much better than I had before" fix, it's now discharging over 99% of the water away from the house as it should. Within 20 minutes, the window well was empty. As we are expecting more rain over the next few days, I'll keep an eye on it.

Anybody else want to man-up and admit a major fvck-up which could have really turned into a disaster?

Living in a Fishbowl

Well, I asked for it in a previous post by calling Mother Nature out to test my chimney flashing, and although she didn't bring her A-Game, she did remind me that she wrote the rules and will enforce them at will. I've been checking my basement for signs of water during the plethora of rain we've been getting, to make sure I keep boxes and other stuff out of the water if any gets in. This afternoon, I went down and found a pretty healthy stream running from the back wall to the drain. It was coming in around one of the window wells, specifically the one by our patio. The same patio which is old, cracked, and which drains towards the house instead of away from it. You can see in the following pictures how much water is in the well - that dark line across the glass is the water level. There is easily 6" of water in that well, but none in any of the other wells. As long as the glass holds, we should be fine. If the glass fails, things could get a little messy. I'm heading down now to put a few layers of duct tape on the glass just in case.




From outside, it's not quite as evident thanks to the leaves and debris floating in the water.