Last week, I found about 6" of water in my basement after the float stuck on my sump pump. It is an ancient house (1770) with a rubble foundation. The walls remain dry, with water rising through the floor. Rubble foundations are designed to shed water (the interior wall is flat, the buried exterior wall is angled. think half of a pyramid. The idea is for water to run down through the rocks, rather than into the basement). So this tells me that it is a rising water table that is causing me trouble. There is a dug well in the front yard, about 20 feet from the foundation, where I can more, or less, see the water table. This is an inherited house and I recall my mother (not an engineer) telling me that there had been a drain off the well that was destroyed when they took some of our property for a road (now I live on a corner). Anyway, prior to that the basement didn't flood, according to my mother. The topography is such that creating a drain off the well, below basement floor level, to a lower part of the property wouldn't be a big deal. But, before I rent a ditch witch and go to work, has anyone had any experience with this. Is this wishful thinking?

I haven't given up on the idea of rain water, and will probably extend the downspout drains further away into dry wells. The downspouts do enter the ground now, but I have no idea where they go.

Get a couple local foundation companies to look at it all and provide their options. They'd know they area better then us and be able to physically see what's going on and provide the best options.

WIth as much water as you seem to be getting adding a drain to the well and extending down spouts probably won't do all that much to help. It sounds more like you'd need a properly designed drain system around the foundation or if something already exists find out why it's no longer working.

Is the well in the front yard for drinking water? If not, and you can do the work yourself....you could do like you said and install a new drain from the well to lower the water table. Installing new gutter drain pipes would probably help too. I'd use schedule 40, 3" PVC for that and run it as far downhill from the house as you can. Let it drain out at ground level unless it will run onto a neighbor. You might also rent or borrow a pump to pump that well down a ways and see if it lowers he water level in the basement any. Doing that would give you an answer as to whether it is the water table seeping in the basement, and you would know before you ever stuck a shovel in the ground. I would imagine that in your part of the country, digging will be difficult until springtime! Good luck with it.

The well hasn't been used for any purpose in over a century. Thanks for your suggestion. I'm embarrassed I didn't think of it.

I think I'd first visit the city/county engineers and explain what's going on. If they can be convinced that they messed it up, they might be willing to fix it.

That might be possible in America, but not here. The few times I visited them, on other matters, they literally laughed at me.