I have never had a sump pump before the awful flooding of last year in the northeast. After getting some great advice from this group, I installed one. I bought a basin and pump from HD. I mounted the pump on top of a brick. I drilled holes in the plastic basin starting about the height of the float up to the bottom of the floor. . Until the rains on Thanksgiving, I never had water in the basin. The past couple of days, the basin is filling to level with the top of the pump but no more. I am assuming this is the groundwater level. The pump is a high-output Flotec. The pump kicks on and empties the basin quickly. The basin then fills up, and the cycle continues. It seems like the pump kicks on every 45-60 seconds. . I am not sure if I have the pump too low in the basin, or if I drilled my holes too low, or if this is really a problem. It just bothers me to see the water in the basin and the pump cycling so much. . Thank you for your time.
If there is no water on your basement floor, it sounds like the pump is doing what it's supposed to do. You don't tell us the most important thing, which is how far below the floor level the water is. I would want it about 8 inchs or less. If you want to experiment, you can set the water level higher and see what happens. I'd also make sure I have a second backup pump installed to trigger at a slightly higher level. And depending on what the implications of gettting a foot of water might be, other backup solutions.
I used to have a sump/pump that ran continually sometimes. Yours might also.
But you can try to simply raise the switch points, or if that is not possible with your pump, raise the whole pump. Watch it carefully; if it never threatens to overflow in the worst weather you are fine.
On my basement the drains were clogged up, so if I didn't keep the level low, it would flood somewhere other than the sump. Hopefully you don't have that problem, but you might.
You need a check valve on your output right at the pump. The discharge line is draining back into your sump and making it seem like more water than it is.
its critical to address outside water issues like making certain all downspout water drains well away from home, so the pump doesnt have to handle as much.
Check valve in place. It seems like I have lots of groundwater. I was thinking I either don't have enough holes drilled in the plastic basin, or the ones I have are drilled too low. Not sure...
You can't have too many holes. I cut the bottom out of mine and put gravel down there. Does no good to have a sump if the water can't get into it.
If the pump is turning on when the water is 14" from the floor, I would think that it should be set a bit higher. As someone mentioned, I'd shoot for 8" or little more, if possible, from the floor. This should be enough to keep water off the bottom of the floor, preventing it from "floating" up and cracking.
If the pump didn't go on at this point, you would be right. But it seems that below you are saying that the pump goes on then. So you don't know what the water level outside is.
The pump is a
I think the pump has to be at the bottom of the basin. The brick must be to keep it a bit off the bottom, so that rocks or mud don't cover the intake ports. I have a pedestal pump and don't use a brick, and just noticed how many rocks I have, working their way up to my inlets. But it's been 10 years and the whole circumference is uncovered, and I'm going to clean them out, so it's not a problem.
I don't think it matters that much where you drill the holes. Details on request.
It would annoy me too. After I was here for a few months, I raised my float switch-trip level by about an inch, and cut down the amount of time the pump ran by 50 percent. Later another inch and now it goes months, I think, without running. However when there is enough water to make it run, it could still run very frequently. The previous sentence is very important. The ground outside your house can store an enormous amount of water, and once the water level rises above your current float level, or a level a couple inches higher, it won't run out of water because of your pump. Only when the water outside your house seeps farther into the ground will it stop coming into your sump. And it can't seep farther into the ground until the water beneath it gets out of the way, I think, by working its way to a stream, as the water ahead of it enters the stream and heads down the stream.
But once the water level has gotten lower, your pump might not run for monhths again, and water remaining in your sump that the pump can't remove may evaporate, or seep into the ground below the sump.
My basement is 6 to 7 feet below ground, and the sump another 17", so if the ground is wet enoug, there is plenty of water above the sump to fill it quickly (of course I have corrugated, perforated, 4 or 6 inch pipe around my entire foundation, on the outside, so that there is an enormous source for water.
In a day or two, or 5 or 6 depending on the drainage and if there is no rain, your pump will stop.
Now, if youo raise the level that your pump goes on, it mmight stop even now, or sooner, and might run less in the futured.
14 inches is a lot. My water level is only about 8 inches below the floor iirc. I was reluctant to go higher than that, however.
I don't think you need a second pump if there hasn't been water since... you didn't say when you installed this.
I need a second pump becaouse once in 27 years, the first pump couldn't keep up with the water, even though I checked outside and it was pumping full blast, and it overflowed the sump. You don't seem to be anywhere near that. I live right next to a stream, which means I'm in a small valley and the water from a half mile** away on this side of the stream flows down to my yard. It's only a townhouse but it still gets its share.
**That's about the distance of the crest of the hill. Beyond that surface water would drain into another stream. I guess that doesn't necessarily mean that water that has entered the ground goes my way or the other way. Considering how much water falls on a half mile, my place is pretty dry. (The newer neighborhodd has a catch basin for rain water, but the rest of the area, including my own area of 100 houses, doesn't.
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When my sump is filling the water that runs back from the discharge line is equal to about 2 seconds of water that comes in through the pipes that feed the sump. But it takes 30 seconds or more to fill the sump. So it makes it seem like there is 6 percent more water than there is.
Next ttime I redo the pupm, I'll put in a check valve, but they seem hard to find. They weren't with everything else in HD today.
Good point. I have two cement troughs, one at the bottom of each downspout. Both pointed away from teh house when I bought this place, but one gradually sank backwards. I put rocks underneath it and after a few years, it was still tipping forwards but once the water left, it was running back to the foundation. This time I raised the ground level and built little levees to keep the water from getting close.
During the last 23 years, in a corner of the basement I don't go, I ruined a piece of sheet rock 2 feet wide and 10 inches high, and 2 or
3 floor tiles. No big deal, but it could have been worse.
How can you not have enough holes if the basin fills in 45 to 60 seconds.
What difference does it make about the height? If the water level outside the sump weren't higher than the holes you think you shouldn't have drilled, the water in your sump would get no higher than the holes you think you shouldn't have drilled, no matter where the holes were. But the water in your sump gets high enough to turn the pump on. So the water level outside is at least that high.
If you made all the holes 4 inches or less below the floor, then you wouldn't get any water in the sump until the water level got that high. But the idea of having a sump pump was to keep the water from getting even that high.
What difference does the height of the holes make, when the weather is as it is this week? Or ever?
I'd also go outside during the next heavy rain and see exactly what is going on. I've found that despite thinking you know where water is going, it's not unusual to find something behaving very differently than you think.
Ask one of the helpers at HD or Lowes. Sometimes the check valves are over with the PVC pipes etc. instead of with the sump hardware, or vice versa. They always have them. Buy two check valves; they are cheap. Put one right above the pump, and another just before or after the point where the vertical rise bends ~90 degrees to carry the water laterally.
Be sure to put them in with the flow going the direction!
I looked there too. I think I had trouble finding one years ago, when I wanted it in the basement drain. But I'll find them. If I don't use the water powered pump.
I think I should have them going in both directions. LIke traffic lights have bulbs facing both directions.
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