But I don't WANT water everywhere!

We’ve established that I never, ever want water in my basement. It causes damage, it smells, it’s all around unpleasant.

Sump pumps can help you control water in your basement and are really pretty simple… in theory.

When there’s excess water running around your basement, it drains to your sump – which is essentially just a cement pit in the lowest part of your basement or crawlspace. In my case, it’s kind of tiny – only twelve inches deep when it’s more common to see 14+ inches deep.

Here’s how they work (if you want to know alllll about sump pumps, go here):

When the water level in the pit gets too high, a float (it, erm, floats) triggers the pump to run. The water is pumped from the pit, up the pipe, past the check valve and outside your home a safe distance away.

Ours is submersible, but the idea is the same

 

Naturally, when our sump pump started being a little finicky (i.e. not always pumping out water when it needed to), I wasn’t thinking about the fact that our sump is rather miniscule. In the interest of not ending up with a basement full of water, I decided to replace it and just headed to the store where I picked up a ½ horsepower pump (I live close to the water, but for a lot of people 1/3 HP is sufficient).

Once at the store, I made one big mistake – I didn’t look at the box and notice that the float (the thing that triggers the pump to start running when the water gets high enough) was in a different place on this pump and wouldn’t be triggered until the water hit 14 inches. After all, why read the box? That would be far too easy.

I didn’t realize this until I’d already gotten home, gotten a new pipe, a new adapter (the old discharge pipe fitting to connect to the pump was not the same as the new one) and the PVC primer and adhesive to bond the pipe to the adapter (I ended up punching holes in the primer and adhesive cans because I gave myself a mild friction burn trying to open them – gloves are your friend). And hooked the whole thing up.

Sigh.

It was back to the store for me and, this time, I checked the box (no metrics) and was assured by the associate that it would work because I didn’t want to make a third visit for a fourth pump.

It didn’t.

Keep in mind, this should be a 15-20 minute project but, by this time, I was onto a fourth pump and going on three hours.

All of the pumps that didn't work.
The dirty one is the old one - guess we know why it failed (hint, it shouldn't be that dirty).

Finally, I took to the internet to find out that the store I’d been going to didn’t actually sell a pump that would work for me. Good to know, albeit a bit after the fact. I finally hunted down the correct pump at a local store in Madison – they had one left and it was a display model.

Since this was to be my fourth sump installation in two days, I was okay with the tradeoff of no instruction manual for half price.

 

Fifteen minutes after getting it home, I had it hooked up, my sump draining appropriately.

If you’re going to do this install, it really is easy:

1.       Buy the right pump and make sure you have the right size pipe that can connect to your pump!

2.       Unplug your old pump, detach the pipe from the check valve (the connector looking piece in the middle of your discharge pipe) and pull the whole thing out of the sump pit

3.       Attach your pipe to your new pump, put the whole thing in the pit and connect up to your discharge pipe and check valve. Make sure you have connectors for this – they’re rubbery tubes with metal clamps.

4.       Plug in your new pump.

5.       Run water into the pit to make sure it comes on at the right point!

And you’re done! I can't tell you how happy it made me to be done with what should have been such a simple project but, really, it’s the little things in life – like the right sump pump and a dry basement.