In October, I bought a large home with a sump pit in the basement. The previous owners had a sump pump but left it shut off (unplugged). I bought the house three months before moving in, so the pump had been disabled for at least that long. The pit was filled with water up to the top of the three inlet pipes and there's no evidence that water ever went above that level.
I thought it odd that the pump was installed, but disabled. So I turned it on and it works. But the pit re-fills to the level of the float switch within 90 seconds! I figured I would just leave it and see if the incoming flow of water would decrease, but it has been four months now and the inflow of water has been the same regardless of weather conditions outside. See picture to get an idea of how fast it fills.
I tried to figure out where the water drains to. It flows through a pipe to the exterior of the house and then turns 90 degrees straight down into the ground. Where it leads from there... I have no idea. This elbow joint occurs underneath our patio, so without tearing the whole patio out and then digging, I don't see any way to figure out where the pipe leads. We do not have city sewer, and I am sure it does not feed into the septic tank (I checked).
Should I be concerned? Should I just disable the pump and let the pit fill up until it stops and just leave it like that? It never seems to overflow and there's no evidence of water ever flooding into the basement. Any tips for how we might figure out where the water is draining to?