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pjderosa

Where to send basement water with a small, flat lot

pjderosa
5 years ago

Hi all,

I've got water table problems with the finished basement in my newly build house (backstory: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5578963) and have been researching sumps and drainage systems. My problem now is the last part of the problem of where to send the water, which I find a bit less written about - so looking for ideas.


I have a small (.16 acre), very flat lot in a village center, not much more room than the ~20 ft setbacks and the detached garage in back. We put in a sump this year after discovering the problem, but when the water table rose it flooded the side yard where it exits onto the lawn 15' from the house, ran away from the house (good) to the road where it then flooded about 1/3 the width of the road a couple hundred feet to the closest storm drain. This might not have been a terrible result, but unfortunately it's also below freezing sometimes at night in flood season and the town came by to say we couldn't do that due to the freezing danger on the road.


This leads us to ask the question of what options we might have given it seems unlikely that there is anywhere within our lot lines that we could channel this much water (thinking drywell, etc.) when the water table is up without having it eventually overwhelm the pumps since they're probably running anywhere from 2-12 weeks depending on the water levels that year.


Anyone have any similar situations?

Any chance the town might help us out with storm drain placement, or are they most likely going to say that we made our bed and now we have to lie in it?

Any chance digging the biggest drywell(s) we can in the furthest corner(s) of our small lot might help at all, or are we just direct sending that water back to the basement?


Thanks!

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