The Census doesn’t ask about basements, but Fairfax County’s tax records do, town included. On a Herndon address outside the town line, about 9 in 10 houses and townhouses have one, 92 percent in Franklin Farm. Inside the town it’s closer to 7 in 10, because the 1970s, the town’s biggest building decade, went light on them: about 4 in 10 homes from those years have a basement, against nearly every one built from 1980 on.
That shows street by street. In Four Seasons, mostly 1970s, a bit over half the homes have a basement; in Hunters Creek, from the same years and full of split foyers, nearly all do. A house on a slab or a crawl space usually has no sump pit to replace.
Why the pits are there is under the yard. Fairfax County’s soil guide notes igneous rock, diabase among it, in the vicinity of Herndon, and says soil formed over rock like that carries a layer of plastic clay. On some of those soils water perches on top of the clay 10 inches to 2 feet down, and the guide calls for foundation drains and waterproofing to keep a basement dry. Soils vary by street, but those drains empty into the sump, and the county’s soil and water district says Virginia groundwater runs highest in February and March.
Where the pump’s water goes is a rule on both sides of the line. Inside the town it’s the Town’s, shown below. On the county side, Fairfax County calls an unpermitted sump pump tied into its sanitary sewer illegal, since the extra water can overflow raw sewage into streams, streets or basements. If your discharge pipe stops at the foundation wall, the soil and water district says to extend it so the water runs away from the house.