Any reason I shouldn't cover over my sump pump?

[Toller]

My sump is 2' deep and has never had any water in it since I bought the house 13 years ago. When I bought the house I found the sump pump was improperly installed and didn't work, so it hadn't been needed in the previous 13 years either.

I have a pretty steep slope away from my walkout basement; there doesn't seem any reason water would want to get into my basement rather than running down the hill.

Is there any reason I shouldn't just put a wood disk over it and reclaim the space? I just have this (irrational?) fear that the moment I do... I know the amount of space doesn't seem like much, but when you figure out the space the pipe requires to get to the storm drain, it could be a nice set of shelves instead.

[Goedjn]

I'd use a metal manhole cover but other than that, go right ahead.

[buffalobill]

[Toller]

When I fixed the pump I ran water into the sump but couldn't get the level high enough to activate the pump; it drained away faster than I could put it in. So unless it is unusually wet out, that isn't a problem.

[Bob F]

The pump is probably there for the rare circumstance when due to heavy rains, the water table in the ground rises above the floor. It's cheap insurance against damage. Covering it should not affect its performance. Removing it would. If the ground really slopes away sufficiently that the water table could not cause damage, you may be safe removing it. You could run a drain pipe to the sump that drops to a lower level outside if that is possible. Bob

[m Ransley]

Leave it incase a pipe or WH breaks but put a cover on it.

[Toller]

A drain could have been run easily enough during construction, but it is on the wrong side of the house to do it now. I wonder if there was some code that required a pump rather than a gravity drain.

[lwasserm]

My Mom's home is in a development built in the mid sixties. My family moved there in 1967, the houses were 2 or 3 years old at that time. Every home in the devolpment is built with one of 2 floor plans (Acutally 4 floor plans if mirror images count as separate.) and every house had a sump pump installed whether it needed one or not. The first time the sump pump operated my folks had been living there about 8 or 10 years and they couldn't figure out what the sound was. I guess the pump has come on no more than a dozen times in almost 40 years. However, the original pump did fail at some unknown time, and was not discovered until there was some minor flooding in the basement.

My advice is to cover the pump so you can use the space, but leave it accessible and operational, unless you are 100% sure that it will never be needed.

[Smarty]

My sump and pump have been covered for over 35 years I have lived in this house with no problems. The original pump has been changed twice in this time period due to normal wear and tear. The cover keeps out anything which might conceivably otherwise fall into the sump, like children's toys, small rodents, etc......

[mm]

It may be unusually wet out. I've lived here 23 years and my sump pump was always easily able to remove all the water that entered it (from the perforated corrugated 4-inch black plastic pipe that surrounds the foundation). And I was pretty sure if I raised the float level, the pump would never run at all.

Forget when but sometime in the last year the ground got so wet and it rained enough that water just "poured" upwards out of the sump and onto my basement floor. Even though the pump was running full blast and when I went outside and looked at the pump discharge pipe, the water was coming out plenty fast.

However, why keep the whole sump hole. Mine came with a plastic "cork" to cofver all the hole except the discharge pipe and the rod coming out of the float. One could make this out of one or two layers of 3/4" plywood.

I was in an expensive new house this week that had what looked like a cement "cork" and for sure had caulking around the water discharge pipe and the radon discharge pipe. (The float must have been shorter). Apparently they are putting radon protection in some homes that don't even have radon. (I checked and I don't, so far.)