Pumping Out the Basement

Ignore for the moment, as best you can, the putrid green color of my house (yes, I hope to paint it a different color some day). Ignore also the brown patches of "lay and grow" lawn turf near the side of my house (which although they were laid carefully and in compliance with the instructions, did not live up to their part of the agreement by growing). Ignore the wheel tracks cutting through the lawn, which were created by me yesterday as I carted 25-gallon totes full of water, in a child's plastic riding wagon, from the back bulkhead of my house to the front driveway.

What your attention should now be centered on is the creatively (albeit hastily) assembled water trough I made. The black, corrugated tubing that carries water up from the sump pump only extends 30-feet. Which means it carries the water from my basement and deposits it in my backyard, where it then seeps back into the ground, and undoubtedly back into the water shed underneath the foundation of my house (where it can rise back into my basement).

So I temporarily ripped a couple of the rain gutter spouts from the house (you can see the end of one such spout coming down near the Master Bathroom outhang) and extended the distance the pumped water moves away from my house to just a bit further down the front yard. This probably didn't accomplish much, but at least it moves the water closer to a slope that flows down to the street. And that made me feel better.

The green garden hose that also feeds into this water trough comes from the second sump pump, loaned by my sister-in-law. What you can't see very well from the angle of this picture is the amount of water that's flowing out of the trough. The water is JETTING out, filling the full pipe and puddling at my feet. The two rain gutter pipes are not welded together, or even loosely connected. I just laid them end-to-end. There's some trickle of water coming out that small gap in the middle, but mostly the water just hops over the gap as it comes flooding down toward the second pipe.

It's not much to look at, but it sure beat bailing the water out by hand.