I apologize in advance, but I needed to vent a little as I sit and wait for the next round of bailing out my basement.

So the night starts really humid and hot in the house, but just before bed we decide we're going to be miserable through the night and close the windows because it was raining really hard and we didn't want to mess up the wood floors.  I just moved in to this house, my first that I've owned, so I decide it's a good time to fire up the a/c and see how it works.  It's also my first central air.  The air isn't coming in very strong so I head downstairs and sure enough, the air filter is in backwards for the HVAC.  I swap it out and as I head upstairs to bed I notice a puddle against a wall.

I'm checking out this small puddle and see it grow.  I'm angry, but it's going to the drain and I know I can deal with it this weekend.  Maybe seal up around the foundation near the steps... hopefully nothing more.  Then I hear a drip.  I head to the finished side of the basement and there is an old electric junction box with a switch that contains an old style fuse. I'm not sure if it's connected to anything, but I doubt it.  Regardless, water is pouring out of this box like a faucet.  Now I'm really pissed.  I'm mad that things weren't caught by me or the inspector when I bought the house a couple of months ago, and angry at the seller.  I assume this was something that has to have occurred before, and it was not disclosed.  I have a statement detailing that they don't know of any leaking, etc. other than some seepage (where that puddle was), but how am I ever going to prove this happened before.

Well, now I'm really mad, and thinking about costs.  Who knows what kind of foundation work is needed because it's coming from an area of an inaccessible crawlspace walled up in the basement.  For sure the driveway needs to be taken out and redone in the back to guide water away from this spot, as I can see it pooling near where the leak must be coming from. 

It gets worse... as I'm dealing with this I notice water start to bubble up from the floor drain in the basement.  It's clear, at least, so it's rain and not poop water as typical in the Milwaukee area, but it's rising fast.  Now I wake up the girlfriend and it's time to feverishly attempt to save belongings from flooding as there is no sump pump in this house.  My living room is scattered with guitars and miscellaneous items, and the basement has stacks on top of other stacks in the few dry spots.  The water keeps rising and rising.  I reached into that drain to see if it was clogged and pulled out handfuls of silt, sticks, rust and mud, so that's not good, but the water is backing up and it's the small part of the problem.  I stuff as many towels as I can into the pipe and it slows down the flooding a lot. 

Well, I figure I'm going to be up all night anyway, and I'm not going to just give away my basement, so I figure I'll fight the water, even if it's a losing effort.  I start bailing... I have a 1 gallon bucket, but the way I have to tilt it I can only get it 1/10-1/8 full at a time, and then walk it to the sink, empty and repeat.  I am guessing this will drain out to the sewer and ultimately back into my house, but as I said, I have to do something or I'll go crazy.  Low and behold it's working, and I'm getting a really annoying workout. 

About 2000 bails into the effort I get hit with a damn CH.  I haven't had a hit in some time, so what the hell?  I did miss my verapamil dose because of this, but I assume it was more the stress or bending or something.  Luckily I have Imitrex injections, so I take a jab and back to bailing.  I got the ware down to nearly nothing, but it's almost 4am, and I'm SUPPOSED to work in the morning... ha!  The problem is that it's slowly rising again, and the weather looks like heavy rain for a long time... maybe throughout the day.  Wonderful.

The next fun part is going back down to bail again when I'm done with my little rant break.  Then in the morning I get to try to find a plumber that isn't going to rip me off and figure out what I need to do to prevent this. I'm guessing a tearing up of my basement is in order, a sump pump installed, and with my luck I'm guessing that floor drain/palmer valve setup is going to have to be ripped out and new pipe installed, probably out into the yard or down to the street.... for thousands of dollars I don't have.  So much for St. Louis and my hopes to buy a motorcycle this summer.  Plus the damn driveway will need to get done, but I guess that's a little problem right now.  The cleanup should be fun, but at least it's not sewage, and can be done for the cost of bleach and some sweat.

Thanks for reading my rant, and send me a note if you know a good, honest plumber in the SE Wisconsin area.   Back to bailing out the basement.

So are the joys of home ownership.

I am going to try to get a basic portable pump for now.  Being able to bucket the mess out and it draining fine through other drains tells me something.  I'm not sure what, but something.  Hopefully that will help if it happens again while I figure it out.

I'm going to call the city, but I'm guessing they'll tell me to pound sand.  I was able to limit the damage a lot, but if I hadn't been home it'd have been really bad news. 

I'm guessing I need to install a sump pump... and have no idea if that means tearing up the basement, or at what cost.  I will likely have to regrade the driveway, seal up the foundation and have that drain cleared or the pipe replaced in it or something.  My luck will dictate that all of the above are necessary.

Check into basement dewatering systems. I have one installed in my basement, it runs around the edges of the walls, and drains into a sump hole, where there is a sump pump. It pumps it outside, and there is a pipe attached to where it comes out, so it runs down the driveway to the street. And when you buy a sump pump, get a GOOD one, cast iron, ZOELLER is a good brand. We supplied those to a local steel mill, and they last forever.

I have also BTDT in the house I grew up in. If you have to bail again, try using a square sided container, works much better than a round one.

Good Luck!

Here is the update so far.  The floor drain pipe is so badly restricted and broken down that a snake wont fit into it. They blasted it out with pressurized water, so that should help, but the drain needs to be replaced, and so does the pipe.  Some of the problem is broken down drain tile that is getting into the water, so either the outside drain tile all needs to be dug out and replaced, inside drain tile needs to be installed (busting up the basement floor) and a sump pump installed with it, or both.  The driveway and the front steps could use regrading as well to help move water away from the house.  I'm already at about $500 and that's been diagnosing it, cleaning the mess up and getting a pump to help if it occurs again.  The other stuff is going to run thousands when it's all said and done.  The plumber suggested going after the seller or their Realtor for some of it though, as it's been a problem for some time, but it'll be tough to prove and the 2nd time we've now had to go after the old owner.

The electrical box is on a wall that is connected to an unaccessible crawl space.  I think it could be plugged from inside if the lines are dead.  It's on the list.

Pouring water into the drain causes no problem.  The problem is that the pipe from that drain to the main waste pipe in the house is so restricted/corroded/gone that it doesn't drain fast.  All of the outside drain tiles lead to a pipe that feeds into this same drain via a Palmer valve.  The water came down so hard and so fast (almost 5 inches from about 10pm-4am) that the water coming into the drain from the Palmer valve was more than could drain out.  There is also a ton of stuck sewage and general crap but it can't be cleaned out because the snake wont fit into the pipe due to the small opening.  This drain needs to stay functional because of all of the drain tiles leading to it.  Also, in this debris are chunks of clay, which likely means a, or many deteriorating drain tiles.  The drain needs to be replaced.  Eventually the outside drain tiles should be replaced.  A sump should be put in, but that will mean tearing up the whole basement to install inside drain tiles.  This could prevent the outside tiles from needing replacing, which would be far more expensive due to the excavating of the yards and driveway needed.  The front steps/walk and back part of the driveway need a minimal of mud-jacking and likely repaving to get the grade right to keep water out of the walls.   I guess that puts the minimum of a replaced drain, drain tiles on part of the inside (at the lowest point) and a sump pump with mud-jacking in the front & back.  Better would be the full inside drain tile job and repaving the front and back, and doing the outside drain tiles only if necessary years down the road. 

The drain will be $500-800.  A sump pump would be $800-2000 depending on how much we go with.  The repaving the back is about $800, but I don't know for the front or mud-jacking. I don't want to think about what the cost of replacing outside drain tiles would be.