Basement flooding from Water coming up outside drain

I have a home built in 1960 with a daylight basement. The floor is about 2' below grade, maybe less.

There is a basement door with a little stairwell (2 stairs) and at the base of the stairs, there is a drain. Very little water actually gets into the stairwell from rain as it is fairly protected.

It appears to me that the drain is connected to a french drain, more or less, that extends into the backyard.

The threshold is about 1" off the slab.

The ground where I am has a small amount of decent soil, turns to clay about 8" down and to fairly solid stone about 18" down. We also live on a hill that drains away from the house.

In times of heavy and prolonged rain, the water table rises faster than it can drain down the hill and it can't really sink deep into the ground.

When this happens, water actually bubbles up from the drain, pools until it gets above the threshold and then comes in.

We are planning on selling the house soon and I don't want to put a ton into fixing this and I don't want to break up the concrete to install a pump or anything like that.

So far, the only idea I have had is to set a pump in the stairwell for those times.

I know this may not be the best solution, so I am curious if anyone has a better solution that would still be fairly inexpensive and not a huge time commitment as I have little time left for this.



Thank you!

Basement flooding from Water coming up outside drain