I would like to install a battery back up sump pump with a flow rate of
2000GPM. It is illegal to drain a sump pump into the sewer, and my main pump is drained outside. Due to piping issues, I would like to drain the back up pump into my laundry sink. Since we haven't had a power failure in at least 2 years, I would hope the city would understand. My question is: can the laundry sink drain handle the flow? I don't know how fast the water comes in, but my sump pump will run about every 3 - 5 minutes in heavy flow times.
Or any regular sump pump in a house either. That flow rate would drain a 40,000 gal swimming pool in 20 mins. Must be more like he's got a fire truck in his basement. Or more likely, just a troll.
Where I am you cant dump a sump into the sewer, which may not work anyway as the drains may not be draining in a flood. Battery powered that you find at box stores are a joke, if you have city water look at Water Powered pumps like
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How long will that battery powered pump, pump, not long. Will you know if and when the battery is bad or know yourself how to monitor a safe battery state, I dont think so. The chargers they use are known to not make batteries last more than a few years, because of under charging, and the Sulfation that will then occur.
Assuming the poster is for real and the 2000gpm thing is a mistake, I don't see why he needs to go to the sink anyway. He already has one sump pump that drains outside. Just tie the second one into the line for the first one, with check valves on both. Two totally independent ones would be better, but usually it's the pump that fails not the pipe. I guess you could make the case for one of the check valves getting stuck open, but seems kind of unlikely. Even if that happened, you'd then have the second pump kick on and wind up with it pumping out anyway.
As others have said, it would be better to route it outside, and shouldn't be too hard if you already have one pipe going outside. First off, it's legal, and second, you would never have to worry about overflow making a mess inside the house. But to answer your question: probably. The first question is whether the sink is bigger than the sump well - you can take some measurements on that one. Might require a little math. Assuming the sink is bigger, the second question is whether the sink would drain before the sump went again, in heavy flow conditions. You would probably just have to try it and see how long it takes to drain. Just put a stopper in the sink, fill it up, then pull the plug and time how long it takes to drain. -- H
Battery power is not a joke, and calling it a joke just shows your ignorance of the whole situation. I'm not sure what a "box" store is, but I got mine at Home Depot. It uses a deep cycle marine battery. The charging unit monitors the battery condition. In 10 years I have replaced the battery once. My power went out last night for 4 hours during a heavy rain and the battery activated the pump about every 15 minutes, no problem. Now that the power is back on, the charger has recharged the battery and it is back in "ready" mode. As for running the pump discharge outside, the problem is, in the winter that pipe freezes up, so no water will flow, so I have two hand valves after a split. I shut off the outside line when it is below freezing outside, and open the other so the water discharges into the stationary sink. The problem is, this same sink takes the washer discharge also, and it became clogged with lint, even tho I use a lint filter. If it is illegal to run the sump into the sink,,,, who the heck cares? It's not like city inspectors are poking around my basement. It is only water, won't hurt a thing. The battery backup system is rated for 7 hours continuous operation,, which you may call "not long", but it is long enough. Yes, I will know when the battery is bad, the indicator beeps to tell me. So you can assume that all of us home owners are too stupid to read instructions and follow directions, but some of us are smart enough to know that you are trying to sell is on your website,, so maybe insulting us homeowners isn't the best way to drum up business. As for undercharging and sulfation, yes, the battery monitor checks those things too, and warns when it's time for a new battery. And the cost of a new battery every few years is a lot less than water damage, usually.
The other people in your community might care, because the more water that you put down the sewer, the more it costs to treat, the bigger the facilities needed, the more discharge into rivers, streams, oceans, etc. That's why they have ordinances against putting clean sump pump water in there. It's a lot of water that's unnecessary.
There are advantages and disadvantages to any kind of backup system. One advantage of a water powered backup pump is that municipal water systems rarely go down when the power is out. During hurricane Sandy, power was out in many areas for a week, but almost all areas still had municipal water.
Assuming it's accurate enough to tell you that the battery only has
2 hours capacity left instead of it's rated 7. How good those monitoring systems are, IDK.
So you can assume that all of us home owners are too
A regular poster, posting a link to a website now means that he's the owner? I don't think so. What's the problem with people looking at alternatives and coming to their own conclusions? As to too stupid, apparently you're too stupid to figure out how to properly discharge water and put it into the sewer, so, there's that.
BTW, the whole thread was four years old and dead.
The setup here was that the water output is a 2" pipe exiting about a foot above the ground outside, and it goes directly into a 4" corrgugated black plastic pipe. The pipe has some small slant and when the sump pump is running, even though the plastic pipe is not below the freeze line, the water flows too fast to freeze, even in 0^ weather which we almost never have. But if by some miracle, it gradually froze and filled up, the connection between the output and the plastic pipe is not sealed. Water would pour out between the two pipes and land on the ground, where it would soak through the ground and soon end up being pumped out by the sump pump again. That would be a problem, but it's never going to happen.
People will be inspecting your house when you want to sell it.
My next door neighbor ran the sump pump output to his sink, and before anyone would buy it, he had to put the pipes back the way they were originally. So he paid twice.
Most of my n'bors run the output under the front lawn and out through the curb. But he and I are too far from the street to do that. My house is the end townhouse, so my output goes under my side yard and into the stream bed. But he can't do that either, and his output goes onto his grass and then his front sidewalk. I'll bet sometimes it freezes on the sidewalk. I'll admit, he has a problem, but he still was not allowed to do what he did. (and it was particularly stupid in our case because not only could lint clog the drain, but in really heavy rains, the stream rises above the sewer manholes, water fills the sewer and backs up into the basements of the lowest 4 houses, including his. There are a couple remedies for this, but both involve keeping the sink plugged, because one is unable to predict which rains will cause that backup. I thought he knew this. )
I want to get a battery backup or a basepump. Installation of the basepump looks difficult in my situation, and my interest in the battery pump rises and falls. I should have gotten a 1/2HP pump when I replaced my broken one, instead of the same thing 1/3. Once in the last 36 years, counting the previous owner, a 1/3hp pump wasn't enough to keep up with what is coming in the sump.
But normally, the sump won't overflow even if there is no sump pump. Water rises now to 6" below the floor and usually stops there. In heavy rain it might rise more, but not 6' normally. Extra protection is needed for non-normal times. Probably because the local electric feeds are underground, I don't remember a power failure during heavy rains. Usually it's when everyone's using the AC, or apparently random times. So a power failure during abnormally high water would be double abnormal. But i still wish i had the second pump. -
There's actually something that looks like an electric substation only
3 blocks from here, so there are only 2 blocks of overhead wiring were a power failure could occur. UNLESS a failure to supply the substation can occur. How likely is that?
I have two electric pumps, with two separate level sensing switches, so one pump normally runs, and one is a backup to turn on in case the water level rises about 3 inches higher than the first pump setting. I also have a wa ter operated pump that is set to turn on about 3 inches above the second el ectric pump, in case both electric pumps fail or a failure of the mains AC. So far I have never needed the water operated pump, but there is peace of mind knowing that it is there in case of a prolonged power failure. I do test the pumps about once a year by disconnecting the AC power until the wa ter pump operates, and then once is is going, I turn on the power and check that both electric pumps do work.
A question, sump pump users, do you have back up power? My daughter and SIL installed sump pump with battery and gen set back up power. Few years ago flood hit their neighborhood. When power went out whole house got flooded causing more than 100G damage. Luckily insurance covered every thing per market value. As a result they have new pump system with back up power.
Do you check their *efficacy*? Or, just "that they work" (make noise and appear to move water)? Impellers often get "gunked up" over time so the motor can be running (or trying to) but no/little water is moving.
So, your daughter installs a generator and battery sump, and THEN they have a flood? That is so inconvenient. Please report what was the failed brand, and what is the good brand of new pump system that actually works.
Many readers of this list will want to know what brand to avoid, and what to reccomend.
My parents house relies on a sump pump. The only backup is the generator in the garage that hasn't been run in many years.
Efficiency. I would venture a guess and say that the average home owner would not be able to gage a pump's efficiency beyond the bigger the efficiency number the better it is. And even if I had the background to be able make sense of how much fluid is being moved, in comparison to the amount of electricity that is being expended, what would I do with this ? If I chose a pump which was rated at a higher efficiency, above a pump rated at a lower efficiency,,, what am I really choosing? Because what I am really concerned with is the flow rate of the pump, not how little electricity it is using at a given flow rate. If I found an aquarium pump that had a 100 percent efficiency but it only moved a tea cup of water a minute,, what use is that? For most of us, our electricity is supplied at whatever rate we use it, of course, within a given range. And how would I really be able to compare my "gunked up" pump flow rate, to the "un-gunked up" flow rate? What home owner would be able to place a flow meter on the pump output, or even put a current meter on the electric line feeding the pump,,, much less, do this "before" and "after", and be able to make a judgement based on the pumps efficiency which excluded all the other factors that have a bearing on the efficiency? Making a decision that, "my pump isn't doing enough" , would be as far as we need to go to decide we need a better pump, whether that means a bigger pump, or a higher flow rate, or both. When I hear that the pump is running, and I can see the water level in the sump going down, then it's working. My pump is hard-piped into the sump, so even picking it up to visually check the impeller would be an issue,, not to mention, the amount of time to remove, and then re-install it would be way longer than the amount of time it takes for the sump to fill up. I'd be knee deep in no time. It's true that, eventually we need to replace the pump. Sometimes there is "gunk" that clogs things up,, but it's not like "gunk" only adheres to impellers. If some type of material is building up,, it's probably building up all throughout the system, pipes, pump, and sump.
The problem I have with the answers that get posted on these forums is that the answers are being posted in a vacuum of not enough details surrounding the original questions. It's easy to say, that the proper way to get rid of the water is to pipe it across the front lawn and into the sewer. But these very specific answers don't address the varied and sometimes complicated situations that present themselves. Things like, the house is 60 years old, and whatever they did with water back then, may be different than what we should do now,,,, and some basements are dugout after the house was built, so having the proper lines isn't always an option. Not to mention, the cost of doing the exact right thing at any given time,, not all of us have an unlimited supply of money to address a problem with the latest technology nor the with expert advice. Sometimes a home owner is doing the best they can with what they have to work with, and the fact that they listed the flow rate of their pump incorrectly,, and then he gets slammed because he doesn't realize that the unrealistic flow rate looks unusual to some who have experience and see immediately that the flow rate is way too big.
In the same way that water powered pumps are described as the end all and be all of pump backups, none one mentions that if you live in an area that's been around for say,, hundreds of years,, and the water systems though out the area regularly has breaks that cause water outages that last for days and days,, well then, water powered pumps are of little value. As opposed to the battery backups that,, use a car battery, and even if the battery died, I could swap it out in my car for a recharge while the car battery is running the battery backup pump.
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