Slight Water Flooding in the Spring

[ttibsen]

At the back of our house we have a subdeck which is about a foot below the lawn. In the spring the water from the melting snow pours down the stairs and begins to fill the subdeck. If it rises high enough, the level will climb above the door sill (the door from the basement opens into the subdeck) and flood the basement. I used to deal with this by vacuuming the water up with a ShopVac and then lugging the water to the back of the backyard where I could be sure that the water that I was dumping could not drain back into the subdeck. As you can imagine, this was fairly arduous.
Can you suggest a pump that would take care of the 2" of water that accumulates on the floor of the subdeck? I should be able to attach a garden hose to the pump to ensure that the water is being pumped far enough away from the subdeck - about 40 feet - so that it does not drain back.

Thanks

John
Whitehorse, Yukon

[ttibsen]

http://img.skitch.com/20090301-gw36f9g28ej5aj5r7rq1w2m6ec.jpg
I wanted to attach the graphic of what I am dealing with in my original post but the graphic was 400KB and the limit for the graphics in this forum is only a miserable 100KB so it wouldn't let me upload my graphic. Perhaps this alternate system for posting the graphic will work.

[ttibsen]

So the alternate system for posting the graphic didn't work either, but it doesn't really matter. I think that I have described the water problem well enough - I just need advice on the kind of water pump that I need for this situation.

John

[ttibsen]

Are there real live people who look at this posting or is this a forum for zombies only who look but can't respond?

John

[Chris]

Water does run downhill.

Install a sump pump.

Remove a few boards, dig a well beneat the deck, put the pump into the well. Run the hose out to wherever, and reinstall the boards (perhaps on a hinge for maintenance).

[ttibsen]

Thanks very much for that reply Chris. Not to be too finicky but I don't see the need to rip up boards and dig holes although I can see that this would definitely do the trick. When this problem first manifested I used a ShopVac to deal with it, as I have said before. I was hoping to do the same sort of thing with a pump - manually vacuum up the sheet of water accumulating on the floor but instead of me shlepping the water to the back of the backyard, the pump would do the work. Do you know if there are pumps like this - where the person essentially vacuums up the water and the pump throws it out to a remote site?

Thanks

John, Whitehorse, Yukon

[obland]

not a site/issue you see everyday