Does my sump pump evacuate water slowly due to a perforated pail?
A sump pump without an inlet won't have any way of getting water into it to be pumped out. It would, therefore be rather useless.
A sump pit without an inlet pipe but numerous holes (such as yours) will allow water to seep into the pit where it will make its way to the sump pump's inlet and be pumped out of your basement.
&quot;Normal&quot; is probably defined by when the sump was installed. Our house has a sump pit in the &quot;root cellar&quot; that was probably added in the 1940s. They broke a hole in the concrete floor all the way down to the dirt, dropped a brick on the dirt, and the sump pump sits on top of the brick. Once the float is high enough, it kicks the pump on and out goes the water.
My in laws added on to their house in the early 70s. They have a nice pit with a plastic liner. There's an input pipe from the &quot;root cellar&quot; old portion of the basement, but, I don't think there's an actual inlet from the new portion - water just seeps in from there.
I haven't a clue what modern (2000+) code calls for, but so long as the water can get to the pump inlet and the pump has power, it should be doing its job.
You're much better off having the pump running nearly constantly during a storm than you are having the water back up into your basement. You may want to look at adjusting the float so that it has to be higher before the pump kicks in, but then you risk overflowing the pit. You could also consider adding a 2nd pump (with its own exit plumbing or upgrading the pipe size going out to handle the additional flow) to handle more water coming in than your current pump can handle. It also makes for a nice emergency backup should one pump die during a heavy rain storm.