Another Project Finished! :)

Well, similar to where I left off last time, but the shovel is almost all the way in the hole this time. That's as deep as I need to go.

First I lined the hole with drainage fabric.
Then I filled in with about 6" of gravel at the bottom of the hole.

After cutting most of the bottom off the sump basin, I put it in the hole and added a few more inches of gravel to hold it down. I then filled in the sides of the hole with gravel and when I got about 4" from the top I folded the drainage fabric over the top of the gravel.

Next was putting the pump down in the hole and hooking up the 2" pvc drain lines to it.

The final step for today was filling in the top of the hole with concrete and putting the lid on the basin.

Good timing to finish it up, there's a NorEaster hitting pretty hard at the moment...supposed to get an inch of rain tonight! I will keep checking and see if I'm getting any water in the basin. Can't wait to get to see it working!

If it doesn't rain enough to make it pump tonight, I'll test it by filling the hole with water myself tomorrow. I didn't want to take a chance with the wet concrete tonight.

The Beginning of the End of the Never Ending Waterproofing Project

Over the past 7 1/2 years I've done a lot of work repairing and waterproofing my basement. I fixed the cracks in the foundation and painted the walls with waterproofer on the inside and filled the cracks around the foundation on the outside.

Unfortunately, as you can see, I was still getting some water though the wall and floor.




So my next step is installing a sump pump relieve the hydrostatic pressure.
First that means making a hole in the floor to put the 'sump' liner into. I used an air-chisel to make a hole and dig out the dirt under the concrete. I drilled around the edge of the hole with a masonry bit and then used the air-chisel to cut a channel around the edge of the hole. I used a cold chisel and a sledge hammer to go the last couple of inches.


I used the sledge to break out the remaining concrete.

Some pretty big chunks. The concrete is about 7 inches thick.

This is as far as I got before my back told me to finally call it a day.

Tomorrow I'll dig the last foot of the hole and put in the liner, stone, and pump.