Start with whether you have a pit at all. The Census counts how old Haymarket’s houses are and what kind, not how many have a basement: across 20169 about three homes in four are single-family houses and close to a quarter are townhouses, and some of each have a lower level set into the ground while others sit on a slab. Look in the lowest floor’s utility room for a covered hole in the concrete with a pipe climbing the wall.
The Town’s annex to the Northern Virginia Hazard Mitigation Plan ranks flooding and flash flooding as a high risk, alongside severe storms and winter weather, and it lists July 2018, when 5.02 inches of rain fell in 24 hours, as a significant event. The National Weather Service’s storm reports add others: in May 2012 a spotter near Thoroughfare measured 4.43 inches the day flash flooding closed Old Carolina Road, and on December 18, 2023, high water along Little Bull Run and the streams feeding it closed Logmill Road, Artemus Road and Pageland Lane. A day like that is the test an old pump fails.
Pump age follows the house. Inside the Town the median owner home is from 1995, so a pit that came with the house has likely seen two or three pumps already. Across the whole ZIP the median is 2006, and about three homes in ten went up in 2010 or later, so plenty of Dominion Valley and Piedmont basements still run the builder’s pump, well past due at fifteen to twenty years.
Where the water goes counts too. Prince William Water names sump pumps, downspouts and foundation drains connected to the sewer among the causes of sewer overflows. So when the old pump comes out, follow its pipe: it should leave through a wall to the yard, not end in the basement floor drain or the washer’s standpipe. On Bull Run Mountain, where about six in ten houses predate 1980, a pit dug years after the house went up is where a pipe gone the wrong way tends to hide.