i'm hoping someone can help solve this mystery for me. My issues start outside. water will travel through the ground pipe to the storm drain, but after some point (maybe when the pump shuts off in my basement?), I'll hear the water come backwards, and it'll come up and out of the ground drain. Water will soak into the ground and the water over the drain will then flow back down.


*I have a check valve inside the house. no water seems to be come back into the pit from the discharge pipe.

*The city has come out and removed tree roots that had clogged the drain near the storm drain. City says water flows normally. I saw the camera feed when the city came out to check. Guys who came out to remove the roots say things looked clear to my 2" PVC piping in the ground.

*My ground drain pipe is 2" PVC that was run through the existing 4" corrugated piping that runs to the city storm drain. While possible, I think it's unlikely that roots broke through both the corrugated pipe and the schedule 40 PVC pipe inside the corrugated pipe.

*No issues draining volume of water from a garden hose put into the ground drain near the house. I have put my garden hose into the ground drain and run water for 10 minutes. No problems draining that volume of water.

*the bend at the elbow immediately in the ground at my house does not collect water, so I do not think I have a grading issue (other than discharging from the pit, I do not see water collecting at the bend. even after the backflow of water, when it drains, no water is left at the bend).

Here is a video of what happens when it backflows. It drains fine for a while before this happens (has sound): [vimeo.com]

Totally stumped as to what I need to do. Appreciate your insight.

I'm assuming your pump comes into the side of that tee? Was your inground pipe Cameron all the way to the point where the pipe comes out of the ground? There's got to be a break in the pipe and I'm thinking of restriction because the water should not be coming out of that 2-in pipe until it gets to the street.

One of the pipes is my primary and the other is my backup. They both connect into through the wye fitting and then down to my ground drain. The set up in the video has a 1.5" going into a 2" in the ground. The 1.5 and 2 are not sealed.

A blockage seems the most likely or a dip somewhere along the time. While what I see seems to suggest blockage, it's hard to imagine how it could be blocked. The 2" runs through a corrugated pipe. And the city has removed tree roots that had gotten in on the city end. The city says that they could see to my 2" pipe when they removed the roots. (The company I used about 10 years ago to run PVC to the city storm drain did not actually run it all the way to the street. I learned this recently when the city came out to remove roots).