I am looking for a little help in designing my own battery backup sump pump. I know that they sell kits that have everything that you need, but the pumps they use must be mounted in the sump hole. My sump hole is small so the backup pump must be mounted on top of the existing pump. This means that the sump must be almost completly full of water before the backup has enough water to start to pump. I don't like this so I would like to create my own system. My basic idea is to use a deep well battery along with a dc style pump. But I want the pump to stay out of the sump and just a pipe going into the sump. This way I can put the pipe down at the same level as my current pump. I'll still need some sort of float to start it and some way to recharge the battery when it gets low. These are the things I don't know how/what to use.
2) In the sump hole, near the surface, could you fit an object a little smaller than a sheet of notebook paper? If yes, you might consider using a marine bilge pump. Here's one that looks like its footprint is about 5" in diameter. 1800 gallons per hour. If you've got more water to move, you've got other problems. :-)
OK...talking out of my axx here, but couldn't you put a relay in between the battery and the emergency pump such that power would only be applied to the emergency pump when the AC was lost?
You can get relays that can be set up to be "always open" when AC is applied to the input. When the AC is lost, the output contacts from the battery will close and power will be available to the emergency pump
I'm thinking you could hook up the original float mechanism such that it powered on both pumps at the same time, but only the one with power would actually come on.
I wonder if you could combine that with an inverter, so you would be using the same pump, but just have an alternate way to power it if there is loss of grid power. -- H
I would think that would be ideal. The original pump handles everything until the water gets that high and then the backup kicks in. If it can't pump the water out as fast as it is coming in, a couple of feet will not help.
Use a pump with sealable connections for hose or pipe at both the inlet and outlet.. The inlet pipe going into the sump would have a foot valve so it doesn't lose prime. Just about any water level switch can control it. You want a charger that will regulate to a trickle charge when the battery reaches full charge. Use a "deep cycle" battery.
It's not BS if your sump doesn't have running water anywhere in the vicinity, or if the sump is active enough during a downpour to overrun the piss poor flow rate of the water powered pump. There are a LOT of sumps out there that will flood with a water-powered pumping toy. Personally, the only time I care about the sump pump and power going out is during heavy downpours when not coincidentally, there is a maximum of water coming into the drainage tile. Even Zoeller themselves downplays this pump as "The ideal economical standby to an electric sump pump."
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Granted though, it will run forever, unlike a battery pump which is limited to battery capacity on hand.
But with a 10' height, Zoeller's water powered toy delivers--at best--a scant 239-479 gallons/hour depending on your water pressure. And even those numbers come with the fine print of "Pump capacity varies due to: Inlet Water Pressure, Working Water Pressure, Discharge Elevation, Number of Pipe Fittings, Inlet and Outlet Hose Size, Fluid Viscosity, Degree of Water Clarity, Water Temperature, Cleanliness of Intake Screen. The flow rates in the chart are approximate values." Ref:
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Are you down there cleaning your inlet screen regularly? Ever?
Basement Watchdog battery operated backuppumps, 1000GPH for the cheapest model, 1730 for the Special and 2200GPH for their Big Dog.
Zoeller also sells the Basement Sentry battery backed systems of similar flow rates, probably most comparable to the Big Dog:
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So neither option is unqualified BS. If your pump doesn't run much when it rains, you don't have a lot of rise to overcome, and you have strong water pressure and a supply near your sump, the water-powered pump might be a good fit for you. In all other cases, the water-powered pump would be BS, IMNSHO.
Frankly, however, there isn't anything wrong with waiting until the water is quite high before switching in the battery operated system.
The AC operated system has unlimited power available and does its thing keeping the basement close to bone dry.
When you are running off the storage battery your goal is just to keep the water from rising above the floor level. When the power goes out you just don't know how long you will rely solely on the storage battery. But with a higher water level it takes less battery energy to pump the water out. And,usually, the higher the water level the less "new" water comes in.
It would be bettter if the pump would work even if there was AC. This house is 27 years old ,and this has only happened once, but that once my 1/3 HP sump pump was going full blast and the water was still overflowing the sump. So if one is going to put a back up pump in, it's best if it will run when the other is also running.
That's a good idea. Maybe both pumps should run whenever the other one does. It would take less time to empty the sump, but the battery would be cycled a little bit more. I wonder if that would shorten the battery life, and how much.
Of course this all depends on how often the pump runs now.
That's a very good point. My AC sump pump ran fairly often, but when I raised the float level one inch, I cut that down by 80 or 90 percent.
If the water outside is high enough to turn on the sump pump, the pump will go off because it takes a while for the water to get into the sump, but it won't stop running in general until the water drains out of the land outside and into a stream, or further down into the earth.
Why waste a battery trying to keep the water 6 inches below the floor if it is not going to rise to more than 4 inches below the floor anyhow.
Thank you John. Your first sentence about the UPS struck me as silly**, but the rest of your post is right on. If I had put in a battery backup, I was going to put it on the bottom, and probably make the float high. But I could just mount it atop the current pump. (I'm still trying to fit all the pipes in under the plastic sump lid, so that might prevent this choice, but it's a good choice otherwise.)
**Although not if you meant that one could probably take a standard UPS that came with little batteries and hook the electrical part to a big marine battery, such as used by battery sump pumps.
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