quote:

Originally posted by OttoSig:
WTF you using red font? We see your post more clearly than you see the source of the water.

Often threads like these turn into multiple pages; they can become difficult to follow along and keep track of.

By posting in red, members who want to chime in with their own thoughts and ideas can quickly see where there may be additional and relevant information added.

It also helps make sure that members who asked a question, can see that their question was answered.

I apologize if I triggered you.

Since you mentioned it hasn’t rained, we’ll assume you have a groundwater issue. The drain tiles most likely are not blocked by frozen water as they are installed below the frost line. They should be a bit below the level of the basement floor around the perimeter of the foundation. They are supposed to allow groundwater to drain into the sump pit before the groundwater gets high enough to flood the basement. The pump in the pit takes the water away.

If the pit is dry, the water could be coming up from inside the perimeter of the foundation. It’s also possible the drain tiles are clogged. Is the pump covered in a rust colored material? Look up iron ochre.

The best thing to do is get someone out there who knows what they are doing. Search the internet for basement water problems.

My parents had an issue with groundwater with there poured concrete walls. Water doesn’t care. The solution was to install a perimeter drain inside the basement flowing into a second sump pit.

quote:

Originally posted by Ronin1069:

quote:

Originally posted by OttoSig:
WTF you using red font? We see your post more clearly than you see the source of the water.

Often threads like these turn into multiple pages; they can become difficult to follow along and keep track of.

By posting in red, members who want to chime in with their own thoughts and ideas can quickly see where there may be additional and relevant information added.

It also helps make sure that members who asked a question, can see that their question was answered.

I apologize if I triggered you.

I'm just given ya a hard time, I'm only half-triggered. Hope you get it figured out, nothing worse than and unconfirmed money hole in the housem

We live out in the country and have well water. There is something in the minerals in the water that eats copper pipe. We have a filter but it does not get all of it. We noticed the sound of water running a couple weeks ago and got a leak finder guy to come out. He connected a compressed air tank to the plumbing and then has listening gear to locate the source of the leak from the sound of the bubbles. He located a couple leaks under the slab. Our best option was to re-pipe that part of the house with PEX because the problem was just going to recur with the copper pipe. We had the problem once before with an upstairs bathroom that did a lot of damage to the ceiling and drywall. Hope this is not your problem, it is expensive to re-pipe a house.

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:
The one last month the plumber was able to run a pex line through the attic to bypass that circuit of the water leak.

If you haven't already, be sure to research a means to insulate that pipe properly. I don't believe OKC gets a ton of significantly below freezing temps, but it does happen, especially with once-in-a-decade arctic masses like last winter.

There were a lot of problems in Southern states like Texas/Oklahoma/Arkansas last winter with water pipes that had been run through attics freezing and rupturing. Running water pipes through attics is a somewhat common practice in the South since it's convenient, and it only rarely get cold enough in most of those areas to cause a problem. but it does sometimes cause problems.

quote:

posted November 18, 2021 10:25 PM Hide Post
No offense intended, but some of y'all either aren't reading what Ronin1069 is saying or clearly don't understand residential home construction.

He's not on a slab. His home is built over a basement. It just so-happens the home was built on a steep grade, so the top of the up-hill side of the basement clears the ground by a couple feet while the floor of the down-hill side is essentially standing atop the ground.

The slab in reference is the basement floor concrete slab. No relation to slab-on-grade construction which doesn't incorporate sump pumps so I understood he has a basement.

UPDATE

So the weather has not necessarily been “freezing“ and now I am noticing that where I am getting the carpet water is on days that normally the sump pump would run at least a little bit, the well is completely dry and there’s nothing dripping out of the pipe.

Where the water is seeping up, would be a direct line of where the sump pump pipe is running under the house.

Knowing nothing about how all of this works, it would almost seem that the pipe is somehow blocked and not letting the water get to the sump pump well ?

That makes sense, if I were a contractor looking to jackhammer your floor out.

Where does the pipe lead, is their access, can you run a snake up thru it? Who knows what might come out. All sorts of things nest in a pipe underground. Including, snakes.

I have a similar kind of basement, high side is ground level walk in on the first floor, low side is drive in garage doors. It's a poured slab floor and then the poured walls on it, no waterproofing in that joint, and they leak. '70s self contractor builder. What changed was an earthquake in 2011 and it cracked from bottom to top. If there is too much rain, the water table rises, which then lets water in as it comes up the walls, starting at the joint, then the crack. We've sealed most with a pro quality kit - a heavy stiff adhesive exterior with high expansion foam in the crack. What we have done it move the intrusion to the next weakest point further down the slope. Bad gutters dumping water against the foundation was one issue, water directed against the foundation from the 8 foot slope front to back was another. We swaled the ground away from the house, curbed the driveway, and fixed the gutters - which were a fix earlier.

I still don't trust it one bit.

We have a french drain on one side which pours water if there is too much running toward the house. How does the water get pressurized, same way a ship sitting in water has leaks - if that opening is under the water table, water pours in. It's not pressurized as much as just there. And when it's raining 6 inches in a day, there is a lot of water underground, just like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke.

And the house is on top of the hill, not at the bottom. We just get a lot of runoff and when water hits the shelf rock - which is mostly solid - it flows to the edge of the hill - our foundation intrusion - and contacts the poorly sealed concrete work which is now compromised.

(Its a curse my wife's family has. Nothing I can do to fix that. And we did move. Here we are, two floods and a remodel later . . . )

OP, looks like some way to see visually under the slab would be nice. If an experienced contractor gets involved their may be mudding involved, which is pumping bentonite under the slab. It can expand and it will block water flow, it's used to seal ponds for agricultural use.

If the house had been asphalted to seal it in the manner most were in the '70s this might not be a problem for me, the only way it will happen now is a complete excavation on the high side and slopes, black mastic and 36" wrapped mastic flashing, which is how they now retro seal underground houses. It's all the same, a poured concrete wall doesn't care if their is a conventional roof or grass up there - cracks leak. So do poured pools.