Working Toward a Dry Basement (Forever)

Hey All. My plans for Sunday changed on Saturday night, when after a company dinner with a bunch of people from Beth's office, two of our friends turned to me and said "Guess we'll see you at 9 AM tomorrow." Given my short attention span, I had no idea what they were talking about. Turns out that a few weeks back, I mentioned in jest that they should come over and help me dig a sump pump pit in my basement. Well, they didn't forget. And being the opportunist that I am, changed whatever plans I may have had on Sunday to make sure I took advantage of their generosity.

For those of you who haven't been reading Beth's blog for the last few years, our basement has been the bane of our NY existence. We've had serious flooding down there at least 3 times since we moved in. Some serious enough to toast our old furnace and water heater. The new foundation and footing drains took care of most of the problem, but there's still a need for the sump, if nothing more than insurance policy.

As planned they showed up at 9 with shovels in hand. It took us about 3 hours to dig the 30" deep by 20" wide hole. This was due to the fact that the clay in the basement was as hard as rock. Once we got past 12" or so, we had to use a steel rod to cut the clay in pieces small enough to scoop out. This process got us down about an inch at a time, and led to frequent exhaustion that comes from ramming a steel rod into the ground repeatedly.

That's Matt, Jason, and me (left to right) with said steel bar leaning against the basement wall.

Here's the semi-finished product. I'm extremely glad the digging is done and the sump pit is in the hole. It will eventually have a lid with PVC piping coming out the top, all of which I hope to finish next weekend. I have grand plans to pour some concrete down there as well, but we'll see where that falls in the overall priority list.