Water seeps through basement floor at drain exit during heavy rain

Question

We've been having heavy rains in Madison, Wisconsin, lately, and on two occasions I've found water seeping into my basement in this location:

• The red x's mark pipes that seem to have no function. When I moved in two of them had crude wooden plugs, which I improved upon with a steel cap and a rubber stopper. One appears to be a lead pipe that was bent over with a hammer.
• The large cast iron pipe is the main drain for the house.
• The pipe in back drains a utility sink and a bathroom sink.

The water is clear and doesn't smell, and we weren't using much water the two times I discovered the leak (so I don't believe it's coming back up from the house drains).

It seems like water pressure from the drenched soil is forcing rain water through the penetrations where these drain lines go through the basement floor.

The house is 100 years old. The basement is poured concrete (including walls) and there is no sump pit or drain. It's a shallow basement (about 4' deep).

Is there a reliable way to seal around these drain lines to keep this from happening in the future?

Answer 1

1. Some water might be tolerable in a minimally finished old basement.

In St Louis, a lot of houses would sometimes get some water in the basement. Some of them a fair bit. If this is going to destroy the berber rug in your man cave that is one thing. If it is going to make a small puddle that is another.

If a little water entering the basement of your old house is not going to cause trouble, you could watch for it and mop it up. You could seal the concrete floor of your basement. You could set up a dehumidifier over a drain.

2. You might be able to figure out why the water is coming in.

In the St Louis house there was part of the stone foundation fall that let a trickle of water thru. I worked and worked on that wall. It turned out that the reason it was letting water thru is that the gutter above was letting water fall down against the house, which then pooled against the house. Fix the gutter, no more water thru the wall.

When it is raining hard, go out and walk around (like the manly Midwestern homeowner you are) and see how the drainage is. Is it pouring past a loose gutter? Have misguided yard rehab efforts caused a change in drainage? If you can see where water is getting up against the house, that might be where the water is tracking down, under, and then up thru the weak point by the pipe. I actually figured out about the St Louis house gutter because of a spot by the house that was all sandy with no vegetation. It had been scoured clean by the water coming past the gutter during hard rain. I was suspicious and then confirmed it with a walk in the rain.

I like the pipe photo and pipe stories, by the way. Old houses are cool.