I'm tired of water in my basement...

The house is split level and has a crawl space under the kitchen/living room.  When we get heavy rain the basement carpets get soaked because of water entering the basement through the crawlspace access in the utility room downstairs.  I'm thinking of buying a cement mixer from HF and pouring about a six foot (12?) pitched pad around the house and rainfall runs off a good distance from the foundation.  

I had a guy quote a sump pump for the basement but the piping to get the water outside made it excessively complicated and expensive (~$10K).  

Any suggestions? 

Definitely not good.  Do you have gutters?  How is the house sited?  In a hollow?  On level ground?

Edit:  A sump pump would be one solution, but even better if you can keep the water from ever getting that far.

1988RedT2 said:

Definitely not good.  Do you have gutters?  How is the house sited?  In a hollow?  On level ground?

Edit:  A sump pump would be one solution, but even better if you can keep the water from ever getting that far.

I agree. I think preventing the water from reaching your crawlspace would be a good strategy. However, some crawlspaces are naturally wet due to underground water features, such as springs - that's the situation I have during heavy rainfall. Our sump pump works well, although it's a straight shot for the piping to evacuate the water out.

Wet basements have 2 options.  The first is to stop the water getting in, and the only way to do this is dig out the wall from the outside, seal it, add drains, then backfill. Forget sloping the grade away from the house, that does almost nothing. 

Option 2 is to let it come in, but capture it, collect it, and then get rid of it. If you have a floor drain, there are some options to direct the water to it. In my basement, I get water seeping up after heavy rains, so I use DRIcore tiles, and the water simply flows under the subfloor and into the drain. 

I also drilled a series of holes into the base of the wall and connected them with CPVC pipe, and ran that along the wall and let it drain into the floor drain as well.

Most storms, I never get water under the floor, but get a steady flow from the pipes. This is a DIY option, but I have also used the SealOnce system, basically baseboards that you glue to the wall to capture and channel the water to drain.  

If you don't have a floor drain, then you need a sump to collect water, and a pump to lift it out. I would get bids on the job. $10K seems high to me. But you can use one of the systems above to run the water to a sump that you put in yourself. They sell pits at the big box stores, the difference is that you are not going to have the gravel runs under the floor that feed the sump, you would be carrying water above the floor to your sump. 

We added big gutters to our house and regraded about 8 feet around the house.

Went from a few inches of water in the basement after every storm to being bone dry.

pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) said:

...  The first is to stop the water getting in, and the only way to do this is dig out the wall from the outside, seal it, add drains, then backfill. Forget sloping the grade away from the house, that does almost nothing. 

 I'll politely disagree.  If most of the water is runoff from the roof that is not transported away from the foundation walls, then piping this water away and not allowing it to pool against the wall will have a huge benefit.

Is one side of the property lower than the other?  I have floor drains in my basement, water creeps in, heads out the floor drain.  House next door (down hill) has a French Ditch around the basement perimeter, and downhill from them people have sump pumps; until at the bottom of the hill - no basements.  The one next door is only 2" wide and starts where the water comes , and it gets progressively deeper at each corner, deepest at the exit site.

Do a French Drain level with the bottom of your crawl space and go downhill away from the house.

Gonna need to see some pics of the house and grading.

I would not do concrete, I bet you would still end up with water issues.  Some big ol gutters and downspouts would do wonders, as would some proper drainage.  Flowerbeds work a lot better than grass does.