Oh gosh I am sorry. We had a water issue in our basement, paid 8k for an interior drain, sump pump and foundation waterproofing. It was also a finished basement, so we had to rip it all out and start from scratch. Wasn’t disclosed when we bought it either. From what I’ve read, you don’t want to paint it with dry lock or anything like that as it will degrade your foundation in time. Concrete needs to be able to breathe. This really should be addressed by a professional. It’s your foundation! It could get worse and likely more expensive to fix the longer you wait. And if you ever sell your house, you’ll want to be able to say that you took proper measures to fix it, because you will need to disclose it. How deep is the foundation? And when was your house built?

Concrete and water are perfectly fine together. You could submerge concrete under water and it will be fine. Having a wet towel sitting on concrete does nothing but be gross over time and attract bugs.

The water should be clear being filtered through the deep grade outside, however, when something is wet, airborne particles (and dirty stuff from before) stick to it, which is what any mold growth would feed on. You can scrub the area clean and it 'should' remain clear water when entering.

There is no interior surface cover that would stop the water - like paint - water is still entering behind that paint, and it will find a way in (note the difference between water and moisture). The best thing to start addressing this is looking outside. Where are your downspouts discharging? Is grade sloped away from the house? Do you have thick mulch beds or a lot of plantings right up against the house? If there are some improvements outside to be made, they could at best eliminate, or maybe reduce the seepage to just a trickle on high rain days.

The sump set up needs some more investigation:

- First, with a new house purchase, I would have thought you would have gotten a radon test. The first thing done is seal all openings, which would include a tight sump pit cover.

- Second, if there is no french drain connected to it, what water is it discharging? With an original sump pit, the house would assume to have a footing drain tile on the exterior (which is a french drain down below the slab height) which would cross through/under the footing to this sump pit. There also could have been interior french drains added later when they had water problems, but that would have been routed to a newly installed sump pit. They also could have later installed just a sump crock with perforations for a high water table, but I would think there would be a french drain somewhere with that. So what french drains are you talking about that go nowhere?

I see you spent a chunk of change replacing the battery backup pedestal pump with a water powered one.

I agree with 3onthetree - you need to find out where the water is coming from. Probably a leaking gutter or downspout or grade not sloped away from the house for 8 feet minimum. Anything you do in the basement is fixing symptoms and not fixing the problem.
Go outside during a good rain and see if water puddles in that corner on the ground or if the water on the roof is overflowing somewhere. I’d say 95% of the time that is the problem and repairs are usually inexpensive.

The other thing I was thinking, who did and when was this work done (sump pump and drain put in). When we did ours there was a lifetime guarantee and it was transferable to new homeowners. It might be worth looking into. The work might have a warranty. Also was this disclosed at the sale? Def agree, look if there is drainage issues outside, down spouts etc. it also could be a high water table. Does you sump pump turn on frequently?

Is the sump pump working? Did you test it? Very simple. My Mom had to have 2 of them, when we were selling the house, one was not working and had to get fixed before sale.

Figure out where the water is coming from. Go out during the next downpour and look. We discovered one of our downspouts under the porch had separated from the angled, bottom part and water gushed out of the downspout right next to our foundation right where in leak was. We fixed the downspout, lengthened it so the water discharged further from the house and our basement has been dry ever since.

Look everywhere during the downpour, including crawling into damp, dark, spidery spaces under a porch or crawl space.