connecting my drain tile to the sump basin

[hmills]

Hello,

My husband and I are building our house, we have all the drain tile down, but we're not sure how to connect it to our sump basin. Is there a particular way to connect to the basin? Does it need to be a water-tight seal?

Any advice would be helpful - we have a Flotec basin if that helps.

[Wgoodrich]

I am picturing what you have done is installed a 4" slotted drain hose all around your house so the top of the hose is no higher than the elevation of the basement floor all around the outside perimeter of your home. You should have installed a 12" square stone bed #4 or larger so the smallest stone in that stone bed is at least 1 seive size larger then the length of your slot on your hose. Then a filter cloth should have been installed 6" above the hose over that stone be the width of that stone bed.

I am then suspecting you punched through your footer and are planning to run both ends of this 4" perimeter drain hose into the sides of a sunken sump pit installed through the floor where you plan to install a sump pump.

Now this concerns me if you did this design. First I see no reason to seal the connections into that sump pit where those hoses enter the sides of that sump pit. You just connected the inside of your basement directly to the outside of that basement inviting any water below grade probably about 7' deep to drain directly into your house trying to flood your basement. Then I suspect you bought a nice cheap sump pump probably about 40 gallon per minute rated with no rating on how much head pressure that pump was designed to pump.

If you did the above you now have two 4" hoses with a capacity of 300 gallons per minute gravity flow rating of each hose giving you an influx capability of 600 gallons per minute to enter into your home hoping that 35 gallon per minute sump pump will keep up. Probably will to few anywhere from the next rain to 20 years. Sometime you will have a flood emergency in your area that is caused by extended period of all day rains flooding everything in the area. When that happens again may be next week or 20 years from now but it will happen, your sump pit will become a nice fountain with water rushing about 4' in the air out of the top of that sump pit overpowering your little cheap sump pump. If you are lucky you may just flood about 3' deep but then you may be unlucky and flood clear to the basement ceiling ruining everything in your basement. Pot luck and a guess in this design just how long before your basement will flood causing your insurance company to pay once then cancel your insurance for any future flooding.

If you can possibly find an area above ground outside that is below the elevation of the basement floor then you need to install a gravity outlet drain pipe from that outside perimeter drain to a point in the grass above ground but below the elevation of the basement floor thus needing no pump at all and no sump pit at all inside the basement. An animal guard is required to be installed at that daylight outlet on top of the grass to keep critters out of that outlet pipe.

Good Luck

Wg