Sump Pumps: Preventing Flood Damage Before It Starts

Jamie: 00:00:01

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Welcome back to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, where we talk homes hazards and how to keep your biggest investment healthy and dry. Today, I'm your host, Jamie Miller, licensed home inspector and, well, part time storyteller.

But today we are going to talk about something that isn't necessarily a story, but it's something real that can happen to your home, and that is disaster with your sump pump. I guess if we'd have a title today would be your sump pump and how it slept when it mattered most.

So imagine, if you will, that you're sleeping at night or you're trying to sleep. It's stormy outside and you have faith that everything in your house is working great. The rain's beaten down, it's beaten against the siding.

Hopefully everything outside is functioning properly as far as getting water away from the home. But if you live in an area that you rely on a sump pump to keep your house dry, this is where you might run into problems.

So water builds up, your gutters can clog up, it dumps off the roof.

Instead of running in the gutters and safely exiting away from the house, it's pouring into window wells, it's overwhelming your perimeter drain tile system. And all of a sudden, guess what? Your sump pump decides to stop running. What does that lead to?

Well, as you might imagine, that leads to disaster in your home. Water in the basement, it can flood fairly quickly in heavy storms.

And if you don't have a functioning sump pump, if you don't have a battery backup or a water backup, which we'll touch on in a little bit, you're going to have a problem in your home. So we've been called out to homes before that have had water issues. And we go out there and we're looking at the sump pump or sump pumps.

And while we are there, they are running nonstop. I've actually been in a home that has had four sump pumps that were working either in concert with one another or nearly all at the same time.

If you have four sump pumps and they're all running and they're all relying on electricity to work, as soon as there's a power outage, you're in a heap of trouble. So what we're going to talk about on this episode today is just how to make sure your sump pumps in good shape.

How to make sure you don't wake up one morning with a disaster in the basement, and how to do some maintenance on it so that you could be more confident that things will work in the future. I think I go back to my childhood when I think of sump pumps and we were in an area that was somewhat swampy.

And I know this because when I'd go out there and slave away in the backyard with the push mower. Yep, back then I didn't have a riding mower, didn't have even self propelled mower. But you know, that's a different story.

That's probably what made me what I am today is all that hard work and cussing and swearing while you're mowing. But we used to have a lot of snakes and I'd mow over them. And this was all because we were somewhat in a swampy area.

Well, if you're in that area and you have a basement, you're going to need a sump pump. And that's what we had. So we would come home. I remember distinctly coming home from vacation to find a foot or two of water in the basement.

What happened? Power went out, sump pump quit, water kept coming through the perimeter drain system and voila, your basement's flooded.

So those are memorable events in a kid's life. I think they're certainly memorable in an adult's life life too. And so we want to help you get as far away from that potential as possible.

Now, with any sump pump, it's a mechanical item, right? They have a certain shelf life to them, they have a certain useful life from which we recommend you replace them. They're not going to last forever.

It might be working great today and not tomorrow. We have situations on inspections where it's working great on the day of the inspection. A month later, it decides not to work.

Usually right after the homeowner moves in and usually right at that first big storm. So it happens. But that's why you need backup systems. So what goes wrong with the sump pump?

In other words, if we go out there and look at it, here's some things we might see. It could be over 10 years old. The float switch was stuck. Sump pumps, there's a couple of different kinds.

You can have a completely submersible which has a couple of different kinds of float switches that the water raises it up, activates it as the water gets Pumped out, it goes back down, stops the pump. It could have kind of a cable hooked onto it and a ball that floats up as the, as the water rises. It can have a pedestal.

It can be a pedestal sump pump where you have kind of, it's kind of above the pit. Part of it is above the pit and it raises a ball up and down a metal arm that's there.

And so regardless of the type of sump pump you have, regardless of how it's set up, it can all essentially have the same problems. So we want to talk today about some of the things you can do to potentially avoid that. Now, there's a couple of things here.

Number one, you can have a perfectly working sump pump and if the power goes out, it's still not going to work. Number two, you can just flat out have a sump pump that's really old and needs fixed and you can have power and it just doesn't want to work.

So those are kind of two separate issues and we'll touch on each of those today. So the. Let's learn from that person, maybe that neighbor, hopefully not you, that has had a problem with it. What can we learn?

Well, number one, you want to test your sump pump regularly. It's something we don't think about too much. You may have a sump pump installed by the builder and it literally has never been needed.

You look in the pit and it's just dry, it's gravelly, it's sandy. Whatever's down there, if it's a, you know, one of those normal pits they put in, it could just be black plastic on the bottom of it.

So whatever it is, if it's dry, that sump pump has never been used. So you don't know if it works or not. So you need to take some water, don't just lift the ball, the float up and activate the motor.

You want to actually know if it's going to pump when needed. Right. You could get that once in a generation, rainstorm or flooding situation in which it will be needed. So be thankful you haven't needed it much.

But at the same time, when something is not used, it tends to wear out or not work.

So take a five gallon bucket or a hose, fill it with water, or use the hose, fill the pit up until the sump pump activates to prove that it works to you. It's a good way to just keep parts working, keep them from corroding, similar to breakers in an electrical panel.

You want to shut those on and off at least once a year to keep contacts on them free of corrosion and from locking up when they are really needed. So test your pump regularly. I think if you test it probably once a year, you'll be good. You know, set a reminder on your phone.

Maybe when the ball drops on New Year's Eve, you go down there and test yourself. Pump. I don't know, that's a silly time to do it maybe. But hey, it might help you to remember it. Check the float switch.

The float switch is that little ball or it's a little cylinder under with on a metal slide. Whatever it is, it floats. That's how you get the name float switch.

It water raises it up and when it gets a certain distance up, it will kick on the sump pump. So make sure that that is working. Make sure that if you pour water in there and it rises up and it kicks on, it's working.

So just make sure it's free and clear. Some of the ones, some of the older ones that would have the, it's almost like a ball shape and it's connected to a cable more or less.

And those can get caught sometimes on other parts of the sump pump or even against the side of the basket that the pit of the pit and then it won't raise upright and then the pump won't come on. So make sure it's free and clear, you don't have any debris in the way, and that you're getting full function, full motion on that.

So those are, I mean really it's pretty simple. Dump some water in there, make sure it's working, make sure the pump, the float switch is activated and works.

Number three, install a battery backup or a water backup system. Wait a minute, water backup.

So battery backup systems and technology is always improving, but in general, if it is, if it's going to require regular or constant use, a battery backup system is good for about maybe 90 minutes to three hours. That's not a lot of time. Your other backup in that scenario is you there with a five gallon bucket hauling them out as it comes in.

So if you have a battery backup system that's going to help you in the event of a brief power outage, that's going to help you in the event that you have a sump pump that kicks on occasionally.

But it's not going to permanently help you in a situation where the sump pump is running non stop, which happens typically in a storm, heavy rain, prolonged rain situation. So in that case, you might want to consider what's called a water backup system.

Now you would need to contact a company that installs these to know for sure what this is all about. But basically what it does, and it's probably more common that in fact that maybe I've only seen in city water situations.

It uses the pressure from city water, which is going to be constant.

In other words, it's not going to rely on a well which takes power to run, but this is taking the water pressure from the city to activate a pump to kick the water out of your pit. This happens in this way. It's going to take about 3 water gallons of water usage to pump 1 gallon out of the pit. So it's not really efficient.

Yes, it's going to jack up your water bill, but if it's functioned properly, it's going to save your house.

So if you're in the city and you're concerned about your sump pump situation and you want to get a backup system, My mind would be more at peace at night if I had a water backup system than if I had a battery backup system. Another thing that goes right along that is an alarm system.

If you look at some sump pump areas right next to the pit, they'll have, it looks like almost like a hockey puck sitting there. Some are wireless and some are connected to a wire, but it's a sensor.

And so if any water rises up high enough, sneaks out of the pit and hits that device, it's going to signal an alarm and it's going to notify you if you're there that we have a problem that needs addressed.

So those are a couple of things you can put in place to give you a little bit more peace of mind when you sleep at night is add that water backup system if you can, if it's on a city and the little donut or hockey puck shaped thing that is right beside there in case water comes out of the pit. Another rule of thumb is replace your pump every seven to 10 years, especially if it's used regularly.

So if you only hear it three times a year, yeah, you can probably get away with it longer. But it's like any device, it's like a smoke detector. Your smoke detector maybe never has gone off, but it's starting to turn yellow.

That's indicating it's getting old, needs replaced. Same with a sump pump. Why wait?

Why risk your house's future when you can just replace it for a couple hundred dollars and have a reasonable sense of security that it's going to function when it is needed. So another thing to think of is to keep the pit clean.

Now, this is a situation we find frequently in home inspections where the laundry in the basement dumps into the sump pump. In many jurisdictions, this is permitted. It's pumped up and into the sewer line that goes out to the city, maybe some areas. It's not.

Regardless, when you get laundry dumping into a pit, what you get along with that is residual lint, detergent, dirt, and just general. And so if you don't clean out your sump pit regularly in those scenarios, you're going to be gumming up the sump pump.

You're going to be sucking things into that pump that shouldn't be sucked into it, like lint and whatever comes out of your laundry. And so you really want to make sure that pit is clean. And that is not a fun job. It smells, it's slimy, but it's something that needs done regularly.

Even if the laundry doesn't go down into the pit, you're going to want to clean out that pit of any kind of debris. Take out ping pong balls, kids, toys, whatever falls in their socks, get them out of there.

Because the sump pump can suck that stuff into the impeller and clog it up, damage it, make it quit working, keep the pit clean. Kind of like the oil in your car. You want clean oil so the car runs well and doesn't damage the engine. So make sure you do that.

So replacing your pump, ensuring that it works properly, making sure you have a good backup system or a warning system of some kind, are three really good ways to help with your sump pump situation. If you have one that runs non stop, I would highly recommend a backup system. Multiple back. We've seen homes with two or three backup systems.

That usually indicates to me they've had a problem in the past. They have trauma left over from that even, and they're doing the best they can to make sure it doesn't happen.

Now, again, now, one thing you can do in addition to the sump pump is address the water issue itself. Where's the water coming from? Can I help that part of it? Typically, there's two kinds of pits in a basement, if at all.

You might have both, you might have one of these, you might have none of them, but you can have a sump pit, and then you could have a sewer pit. A sump pit with a sump pump is generally where underground drain water drains too.

And this would be the perimeter drain tile system around both sides of your floor, Water on your home, and it's connected so as Groundwater rises during, you know, high water levels or storms. It'll funnel through that drain tile to the sumpit and get pumped out.

The other kind is a sewage pit, very similar, except the only pipe coming to it is coming from a potential basement bathroom or maybe the laundry or maybe just a second sink. Sometimes that's all it is.

And that isn't taking groundwater, that's just taking the sewage from the bathroom, pumping it up to the main sewage pipe to get out of the house. The generally, the sump pump will not go into that sewage line. You don't want it to. It'll just go out and discharge on the yard.

So you have one of those two things. The talk today has been more about the stuff sump pit part, the one that gets more water.

But I have had the experience, of course it was at Christmas when family was visiting from out of town where my sewage pit, which had been functioning well for oh, 12, 13 years, decided to stop functioning.

So we had to, on Christmas Eve, run out, grab a new pump, take about 30 gallons of sewage out of that pit, clean it out, put a new pump in, hook it back up and get it all going. Fortunately, my son in law, who's very handy was there and we got that done.

But you know what, that's not real pleasant and the timing was even worse.

So sump pump, sewage pit, whatever you have in your basement, that helps keep the water going where it's supposed to go, that helps keep the sewage from backing up into your house needs to be maintained, it needs to be regularly checked. And if you haven't done so in a while, I would highly recommend that you do that.

So if you're listening to this today, you don't know exactly what you have in your house. You don't know even where your sump pump is. Sometimes folks will just set appliances, cabinets, whatever, right over their sump pit.

And since over partial, if you have a pipe coming out of it, obviously you can't put it directly over the top. But whatever setup you have, if you have questions about it, we'd love to help.

Heck, you can even send us a picture of it if you are wondering what's going on and if anything needs done with it. So thanks for listening today. Here's to keeping your house dry this winter season and thanks for listening. We'll talk to you next time.

Thank you for listening this week you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube for more information about Gold key inspection services, go to goldkeyinspect.com.