If you are reading this article, you either want to prevent a wet basement or have a wet basement. If you have experienced a wet basement in the past, you don’t want that to happen again. In the Twin Cities, we have homes that are installed in areas with high water table. This will put additional stress on your home’s foundation and drainage system around the interior and exterior of your home.
The first thing we need to figure out is whether your home has a sump pump. The 3 scenarios we are looking for are:
- You have a sump pump basket drainage system and pump
- You have a sump pump basket drainage system (no pump)
- You don’t have a sump basket drainage system or pump
You have a sump pump basket drainage system and pump
To identify that you have this in your home, you will want to go to your basement and look for a black hole in the floor of your mechanical room with a diameter of approximately 24”. This hole sometimes can have a cover over it. It is a hole with approx. 24” – 36” of depth – so don’t drop your phone in it when you are looking at it!
Once you have identified the basket, you will investigate it to see if you have a pump inside it. This is where your phone flashlight comes in handy. When you look down it you will see a small pump inside it with a pipe extending out from it and leaving the basket to the exterior of your home.
In this case, we highly advise that you add an additional battery back-up sump pump to your system. Check out our other blogs to learn more about this.
You have a sump pump basket drainage system (no pump)
When you look into the sump pump basket and find that there is not a pump present, this is where you need to consider a few things. Is there water in the basket? If there is a water in it, we suggest that you contact a plumbing professional to discuss your options.
If you look into the basket and find no sump pump and no water, it important to consider if you should put one in. Are you a new homeowner to the home, you do not have any history on the home so you want to avoid being surprised by a flooded basement. If you have lived in the home for years and haven’t had an issue, then it may not be necessary to install a sump pump into the basket. The only catch to this is; have you made any structural alterations to the home or adjusted any landscaping around the home?
You don’t have a sump basket drainage system or pump
This is a precarious position to be in. You can either be proactive or wait for a problem to come up. If you are like many homeowners, you may have had water issues but never corrected them. If this is the case, this is your year to be proactive. With over 12” of snow on the ground, it is going to melt and this is the year that you find it inside your basement. To avoid this, you will need to hire a company to first install a drain tile system. To a find a good contractor for this, call your plumbing professional for a recommendation.
To learn more about sump pumps or to make an appointment, contact the St. Paul sump pump experts from HomeWorks today.