quote:

Originally posted by The Home Care Club LLC:
Ah a picture is worth many posts.
Where your reaching is not below any footing. They simply formed the pit with cement and poured. Then they placed a cement patch on the bottom it appears and punched holes into it to allow the water to enter. While the amount of water that is running into the pit is a little alarming it is also not uncommon.

I suggest that you go the outside water proofing method. Any water that is running into the pit at that rate is also running under the real footings of the house, thus undermining their ability to suppor the foundation walls. Solid pour or not.
You may have stated here somewhere else but if the pump is off does the water come over the floor? Or does it level off at a few inches above the pump base?

The amount of water you see entering the pit from the outside footer drain is NOTHING like it is during a torrential downpour. When we get real heavy rains, the drain POURS water out into the pit at an astonishing rate.

I have not tried to shut the pump off and see how high the water fills the pit from the "hole" where I can reach my hand it.

Obviously if the pump was off and there was water coming in from the footer drain it would eventually overflow and spill onto the floor.

It would seem that I have a lot of water running under the basement floor itself especially since water enters the pit from the bottom of the pit by the "hole"

Something that intrigues me...last week we got 2 inches of rain in a very short time and my basement had water seeping in at the cove joint of the interior block wall like it did before. This past Monday, we got 2 inches of rain again but this time it wasn't torrential downpours like last week. I got not a drop of water in my basement. Same amount of rain over 30 hours instead of 10 hours

quote:

Originally posted by SDW:
Dave:

No way is your floor area 18" thick. If they poured your floor "monolithic", remember the top of the footing is the same as the top of the floor, hence the drain tile seems high. On the exterior edge of your floor (outside edge of sump)the concrete could be as thick as 42", because they dug a trench for the footing and then poured it and the slab together. The interior edge of your sump liner is most likely 4-6" thick.

Well, just because I was so curious, I had my dad's friend dig up a small section of my basement floor by the sump pit by the exterior wall.

My floor is indeed a monolithic slab or "mono pour". He was telling me that mono pours are usually real thick around the exterior walls usually 10 or so inches thick.

Well, the section he dug up at my exterior wall, the floor is only 3" thick! It seems like they built the house on a patio slab or something

Should that be of any concern?

Example of why to take what most contractors tell you with a grain or two of salt. Actually, a normal one- or two-story house barely even needs footings, depending a lot on the soil conditions at that level. Let's say you have a two-story house, 28 feet from front to back. You have 14 feet of roof load at say 40 pounds per square foot, 7 feet of attic floor at 30 PSF, 7 feet of second floor at 40 PSF, and 7 feet of first floor at 50 PSF. That amounts to 1400 pounds per linear foot. Let's assume you have 8-inch thick basement walls. That's a load of about 2100 pounds per square foot on the soil, barely over a ton. Many soils can handle 2 tons, and some three tons. If we architects don't know the soil conditions, we design for a soil bearing value of one ton or 2000 pounds per square foot, which all but the very worst soils can support. So, the absence of footings is not necessarily a problem.

Besides, they may have poured the basement floor slab right over the footings for some unknown reason, probably a bad one, since it is not good practice. So, you may still have footings.