The term common sense is bandied about quite a bit. We often use it to describe something where the solution or the correct way should be glaringly obvious. A no brainer. Actually good sense would be a more apt and accurate description, but I am not here to change the English lexicon.

Being a home inspector I regularly find stuff where I think, common sense would tell you...

Take for example this little piece of work. It looks like what it is, a pipe coming out of the side of a houses foundation.

What is that pipe attached to you may ask. Well it's attached to a sump pump. A sump pump that was just installed by someone the sellers hired because their basement regularly floods and has for many years. The sellers stubbornly realized that in order to sell their home a pump would at the very least need to be installed to alleviate the water problem in the basement.

Of course living with a water problem for years and years is another example of a lack of common sense, but I digress.

The sump pump is located on the opposite side of this wall directly below this pipe. The water that is expelled from the pipe will pour back against the foundation to be re-circulated by the pump.

Have you ever seen a hamster running in one of those wheels? This is in essence no different. Water spits out the pipe, flows back down along the foundation, gets recaptured by the pump and back out the pipe, repeat.

Fortunately all that is needed to fix this problem is to lengthen the pipe. I am certain most people would have by this time have come to this same conclusion.

Whether this was a case of a lack of good sense or laziness I can only speculate, but this I do know; no one wants a hamster wheel for a sump pump.

James Quarello
NRSB #8SS0022
JRV Home Inspection Services, LLC

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