Window Wells filling with water

[Jerry Simon]

1950's era house with shallow (2') window wells, no installed well drains.  Wells are filling with water during moderate-heavy rainfall.  Water is not coming over tops of wells or through sides of metal window wells; it's perking-up through soil below.  Soil grading is mostly fine & dandy (in fact, worst problem is at well where grading is excellent).

Basement is finished, so adding well drains that run down basement walls and tie-into stone below basement slab not an option (I've seen such done and work well on several occasions).   And, digging and installing new well drains would be extremely costly.

All I can think of is to dig down in each well to accommodate pouring about four inches of concrete in the base of each well, half the depth of the new concrete below the bottom edges of each metal window well, the other half up above the bottom edges of each window well.  Then, use an appropriate type of sealant to seal the perimeters of the wells to the new concrete bases.

Anybody have other helpful thoughts?

[Jim Katen]

From your description, it sounds like the ground water is completely surrounding the basement, like a boat. This seems unlikely because if it were, water would surely be leaking into the basement. 

Thinking out loud: what if the water is accumulating on a hard lens of soil, with dryer soil below? It might be interesting to drill a 6' or 8' deep hole in the bottom of one well to see what happens. 

[Jerry Simon]

10 hours ago, Jim Katen said:

Thinking out loud: what if the water is accumulating on a hard lens of soil, with dryer soil below? 

Basement is otherwise dry.  Your posit makes sense.

Drilling as you say may give the water a path down to better soil, or, down to stone around footers.  Then, sink a 3" PVC pipe to footer stone.   Good thoughts.

Edited May 23, 2020 by Jerry Simon