Crawlspace Water Problem

[brandones]

Hi all,

New homeowner here, just bought my first house, and now I've got my first real problem that I need to ask for help on.

We've had a pretty abnormal April so far, with several inches of snow and rain. The rain is falling while the snow is melting, so it's been pretty much an onslaught of water. Tonight I poked my head in the crawlspace under my entryway, and I had 6-8 inches of standing water above the sand floor. What concerns me most about this is that I have a sump basket on the other side of the house, and although there's been water in there and the pump kicks on several times a day, I haven't actually seen water draining from the tile outlets into the basket. Seems as though the sump is filling from the bottom up. And it appears as though the tile outlets are lower than the water level in the crawlspace, so I'm assuming that water should be draining to my sump rather than rising into my crawlspace.

Luckily I have a utility pump and I was able to drain all but about a half inch of water out of the crawlspace, but now I need to solve a couple of puzzles. Anyone have an explanation on what might be going on, and/or some advice on how to diagnose and fix my problem? There aren't any signs of water damage in the house, so as long as I nip this in the bud I think I can get out of this without too many headaches (I hope).

[pushkins]

Congratulations on your first house.
What your seeing isn't flooding water but rather a rising water table due to the amount of water trying to absorb into the ground. The sump pit should be capable of handling this water.
There are a couple of solutions, firstly make sure the sump pump is pumping the water far enough away from the crawl space, too many times I see the pump discharging water 5' from the crawlspace, this is not far enough away, almost all that water will come back in, especially if the grade at the house is not very good (grade ideally should be 6" in 10' fall away from the house). A second sump pump pumping the water to a lower grade on the other side of the house from the first will be the easiest option, again making sure that the discharge is well away downhill from the home.
The second solution would be to install a french drain around the perimeter of the home, this obviously is a harder option, but IMO is by far the most effective. A french drain is a trench with drainage rock in the bottom perforated 4" pipe that is then covered with more drainage rock (pipe covered by a pipe sock is also advisable) sod can be planted over the top.
What this does is gives the water a better place to be and directs the water to a place that you want it like the street, culvert, downhill, etc...

Also it would be very advisable to install a vapor barrier on that crawlspace floor.