I went downstairs today to do a load of laundry in our new washer and dryer, and noticed that an area of our basement wall under our window was wet. Upon further inspection, I noticed that water was actually running through the seams of the window and down our walls, luckily, into our sump pit. Of course, we don't have a pump set up, so who knows how long that pit will take to fill up with water. It turns out, the water is collecting in the window well outside and is flowing through the seam in the window. So both our window is not sealed properly, and our yard is graded properly, because we should not have water building up in our window well, and if we do, it definately should stay outside.
I spent 30 minutes outside in the cold, rain, up to my knees in snow with a bucket scooping the water out and dumping it at various places around the yard. When i finished, and the washer stopped running, I checked it again. It had filled back up and is doing the same thing.
I just went down to check on it and it's still flowing. The sump pit isn't full yet, and it looks like there is about 8 inches of depth to go, but who knows how long that will last. I took a bunch of pictures and will post them soon.
The other great thing about this, the water is running down alongside of an electrical outlet put there for the sump pump that we don't have. I did, however have enough smarts to shut the outlet off at the breaker box in the garage.
Posted by doug at February 3, 2004 04:38 PMYour kitty prolly thinks it's her own personal water fountain! :)
Posted by: stacey at February 3, 2004 09:27 PMneat. that's a lot of water! i guess you're ground is saturated that far, so it just rose from underneath? or did it dump in from the top? maybe you need to shovel the snow a couple feet away from the house.
Posted by: john at February 4, 2004 08:54 AMIt's running in from the sides of the well and up from the bottom. The ground around that area is completely saturated. So much that when I stepped in it, I sank a couple of inches. When i emptied the well, I could watch the water poor back in from the sides. I did check last night before going to bed and it had stopped. The water that was in the window well is now all in our sump pit and nothing else was flowing in.
The snow is actually melted a couple feet back from our house. It's just that they didn't grade our yard properly and all the water runs right up against the house. I'll have to look into backfilling that area this spring. Just want I wanted to waste my time and money doing :)
Posted by: doug at February 4, 2004 10:48 AM