Recommendations for a SELF PRIMING (not a submersible!) cellar pump.

I did wonder about that. I also wondered where all the water went on the one I replaced...

So this pump is probably pumping out say 100l/m

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as is not pumping as high as 1.5m and it ran for just over 3 days solid. Now if I am correct that is 432000 litres of water or 432 cu m of water that went somewhere. That's just short of a fifth of the contents of an Olympic swimming pool.

Reply to
ARW
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I did give that option some consideration but the whole project has become somewhat academic after this afternoon's "Fun 'n' Games" with our foul water drain and my set of repurposed ex-BT duct rodding kit plus two purchased sets of drain rodding kits (the problem is in a 16 metre run down the drive from the main manhole at the top down to the "P Trap" near the bottom which links into the main sewer line).

My lad had checked out the basement at 9am and it seemed ok then but, when I checked it out just after high noon (1pm), it was even more flooded than it had been on the Sunday afternoon! We'd had some rain but not what I'd have called 'Monsoon' rainfall so there was obviously something amiss with our drains despite the total absence any foul odours from the basement. Sure enough, when we lifted the cover off the manhole at the top of the drive, we saw that water was backed up from the drainage pipe that runs under the drive to the P trap near the bottom before it links to the main sewer pipe under the road.

It actually needs nine 2 metre latching duct rodding poles to rod the drain through to the P trap from the main manhole. The screw fittings on my makeshift 'drain rods' are smaller and don't match the larger threads of standard drain rodding attachments so, 25 years or more back, I'd sacrificed one of the 13 or so rods to solder the female connector into the brasswork of a standard 4 inch rubber disk drain rod attachment so I could use my thinner and more than double the length of the cheap, non- locking drain rodding kit poles to unblock my drains.

Unfortunately, this time round the rubber disk met an immovable obstruction 2 metres shy of the P trap, hence the decision to make do with the crap grade drain rodding kits (TWO NEEDED since one wasn't enough) so we (my son and I) could utilise the spiral claw grab (and the folding scraper if required - it wasn't required) and with a little more welly (but not much more since although the rods might have been fatter, I suspect the plastic tube wall thickness is a lot thinner than the quality BT stuff I was used to).

The only way I could rod beyond the obstruction was by removing the rubber disk attachment which allowed another 2 metre rod length's worth to pass. Unfortunately, my lad couldn't see any sign of it appearing at the P trap, some ten feet down from the inspection access port. Nor could he hear any disturbance (the end of the rod hitting the side of the P trap or gurgling of water passing through the passageway left in the obstruction after withdrawal of the rodding poles). Quite frankly, it was a mystery as to where the end of that 16 metres worth of rodding disappearing into the manhole drainage pipe was going.

My lad had the bright idea of using his Karcher pressure washer to spray down the inspection access pipe to loosen up the blockage. I let him despite the fact that he didn't have a 12 foot lance to apply the high pressure spray to where it mattered, some ten foot or more down. Only after all of that did we take a break to regroup and consider other means of clearing the blockage(s).

Alternative tool attachments were considered (and bought by my son despite my explaining that they wouldn't fit my set of ducting rods) before we decided that the only way forward was to then buy TWO Drain Rodding kits (since one was insufficient) so we could actually avail ourselves of the additional tools without my having to sacrifice yet another rod end to make up another adapter (and the need for a blow torch to do the soldering).

So off my son goes, this time to Screwfix since our local Toolstation was out of stock of drain rodding kits - they'd supplied my XYL with a size 9 pair of wellies (£8.90) earlier in the day and my sprog with the drop scraper 100mm and the double worm screw 50mm attachments (another £4.35) he'd bought against my advice - to purchase the required rodding kits (£47.98 the pair). Only then were we *finally* tooled up for some serious drain rodding exercises (hard graft!).

First thing to try was the more promising looking double worm screw 50mm attachment which we hitched up to both sets of rods. this hit the obstruction and I screwed in the clockwise direction (being particularly careful *never* to turn in an anti-clockwise direction - no latch mechanism like my BT duct rodding kit to save losing rods down the drain! ).

This failed to grab more than a single "Flushable Wipe"[1] from the 'plug' in spite of several attempts. Thus wearied by such fruitlessness, we turned our attention to the P Trap inspection shaft and here we had more "Luck" (if you can call retrieving lumps of shit caked "Flushable Wipes"[1] on the double worm screw 50mm attachment which you had to stand on to unwind off the double worm screw 50mm attachment before attempting another 'fishing expedition' 'Lucky').

Eventually, I had amassed a small and stinky collection of turd coated bundles of "Flushable Wipes"[1] at the end of our drive after about half an hour's worth of fishing before I decided to have another go with the duct rods, initially with the disk attachment, then without, both times without result.

My sprog, who had in the meantime carried on the fishing expedition at the bottom of the drive, decided to lay off that task and see what I was up to. He advised me to give it a rest just as I'd decided to withdraw the unadorned duct rods for the the second time, shortly after which, I heard a rumbling sound followed a few seconds later by the sight of the water in the manhole dropping rapidly and finally clearing. By the time we'd raced down to the P trap, the show was pretty well over.

We'd both had visions of being stuck on this Hopeless Task until nightfall (it was just turned 6pm by then) so we were both very relieved and pleased that the blockage(s) had finally submitted to all our hard work (and expense!). All that was left to do was the tidying up of the shitty mess on the end of the drive (a heavy duty plastic waste sack took care of that) and the collection and rinsing off of the various tools and restoration of the manhole cover and so on and we could finally clean ourselves up and have a late tea just after 6:30pm.

The sprog finished vacuuming out the remaining water from the basement so now it's just a matter of time (yet again!) before it dries out. Hopefully, that's it for the next 25 years or so when, one way or another, it'll be some other poor sod's problem.

I've decided not to bother with a sump pump after all of that - I've already 'thrown' some 61 quid at the 'problem' and I don't see any pressing need for a sump pump now that we know that any basement flooding is proved beyond doubt to be a blocked foul water drainage issue that we're now better tooled up to deal with (if dealt with in a timely fashion that is!).

However, regarding your suggestion that the wet 'n' dry vac might be able to lift the water all the way onto the driveway, I rather doubt it could do. Although it managed to suck the water up a 3 foot standpipe from some 4 foot or so down the pipe which did impress me, I strongly suspect it won't be able to draw the water much higher than this and it would have to raise the water another 4 or 5 feet to make your idea feasible. As I said before, I did briefly consider such an option but it just seemed so unlikely that it would be able to manage a total lift of the 10 foot or so required for this task that I immediately discounted it.

[1] "Flushable Wipes" (and I can't stress this strongly enough) *aren't!* You'd be well advised to totally discount any implication of "Flushable" on the packaging of such toilet wipes as having any basis in 'Fact' and treat them as you would "Disposable Nappies" (Diapers for our American cousins), ie never *ever* to be flushed down any toilet drain.
Reply to
Johnny B Good

Not really unless you're prepared to max out the 3.3 and 5 volt rail loadings to get more than 11.5 volts out of the 12v rail(s).

In any case, the sump pump requirement, as you will see from my other post about Tuesday's adventure, has become somewhat academic I'm finally glad to say. However, thank you (and everyone else) for the various suggestions.

If nothing else, I'm now all too painfully aware that the cheapest sump pump option will require a rather deep sump hole to drop a submersible pump into. Trying to locate a quality self priming pump that doesn't need total submergence into an oversized sump hole is like trying to buy rocking horse shit. :-(

Reply to
Johnny B Good

I'm guessing you were trying to lower the local water table. Where were you pumping it out to? Perhaps its output was contributing to the local water table via some cunningly hidden route? To misquote, "We're gonna need a longer hose."

Reply to
Johnny B Good

This Tuesday's adventure has made the whole project somewhat academic now.

Reply to
Johnny B Good

Although the need for a pump has been rendered academic after Tuesday's drain rodding adventures, I do appreciate your suggestion. What's particularly appealing about this pump is the fact that, unlike pretty well all the other pumps I'd been considering, it doesn't need total immersion to prime itself, just a mere half inch deep puddle of water suffices in this case!

I'd say that was a major plus point to anyone contemplating a less onerous means than a bailing and bucket brigade solution to an occasionally flooding cellar. :-)

Reply to
Johnny B Good

Ay? I use a PC power supply as a general purpose supply and can load the 12v output quite a bit without any load on the other outputs.

Reply to
Chris Green

I think most of us here will know that. The unanswered questions are (a) who flushed them (b) who allowed them into the house in the first place (c) are you able to sue the manufacturers of said products?

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

Perhaps a cheap water alarm, though? three quid on ebay, beeps when two contacts are wetted and if the battery is still good. It would give advance warning of rising water.

Likely true.

I did like the idea of a vac sucking up the water, shutting off, a Rube Goldberg contraption opening and then closing a drain valve, and the vac slowly huffing and puffing the water out, like some early condensation steam engine.

Thomas Prufer

Reply to
Thomas Prufer

I must admit, that was part of the appeal to me when considering the problem of putting my speculative investment of a standpipe sump drain to use. :-)

The wet 'n' dry vac had proved it could be done so all that was missing was some automated way to pump the contents out to where it wasn't likely to return and haunt me. I did manage to find my repurposed W/M pump (not mounted on a piece of plywood as I thought I'd done over 25 years ago - false memory syndrome?).

Hopefully, my memory of it pushing the water up a length of attached hose going out the back door wasn't false as well. I haven't got round to testing it since the bearings are stiff and need lubing and freeing up before I screw it down to some wooden base and find some means of attaching suitable hose.

I do have a very strong recollection of leaving it running dangerously close to the water level (W/M pumps simply don't have a self priming requirement) for hours at a time but I wanted to make damn sure that my memory of this wasn't a false one before mutilating the plastic cannister of an otherwise fully functional wet 'n' dry vac.

Since I (with my son's help) have managed to clear the primary cause of our basement dampness/flooding yesterday by the additional 61 quid's worth of expense in cheap 'n' nasty drain rodding kits (and a pair of size 9 wellies for myself in the event of my needing to literally 'wade in' to another basement flood), the urgency to set up and test my makeshift pump has totally evaporated. Just the same, I'd like to test the efficacy of such a makeshift drainage pump sometime soon for future reference (and, quite frankly, to satisfy my now idle curiosity).

Such a set up could represent a cost effective DIY solution to basic basement drainage. How many here, in this DIY group, *don't* have a collection of scrapped washing machine parts to hand? :-)

Reply to
Johnny B Good

I must admit, I have flushed a tiny number of them over the past 6 months or so (maybe as much as half a dozen and essentially by accident - I was always suspicious of their "Flushability" in the first place). The rest of them, over many years now, I expect would have been due to my XYL (and possibly our son). I'm not accusing them of creating the drainage problem, just blaming them :-).

I've advised my XYL that the blockage seemed to consist of these "Flushable Wipes" and that, from now on, it's better to ignore the patently false claim implied by this description of "Flushability" and dispose of them in the waste bin rather than down the toilet pan.

Whilst it's true that they can certainly be flushed down the toilet pan, it's about as good an idea as flushing used handkerchiefs in that there's absolutely no guarantee that they won't accumulate in the foul water drain to induce yet another bout of basement flooding. Basically, anything more durable than toilet tissue has to be disposed of in the waste bin.

We can all be thankful at least that our sewerage systems here in the UK can, unlike those in Greece which seem to have been constructed to a third world standard, can tolerate such 'toilet tissue abuse' with ease. :-)

Reply to
Johnny B Good

You may be using a PSU with a higher than the usual specification typical of most PC supplies. Generally, the 12v regulation arises indirectly from the direct regulation of the 5 and 3.3 volt rails, relying on tight coupling between the primary and secondary windings of the compact high frequency stepdown/isolating transformer used in the classic smpsu based PC supply to hold the 12v rail within its looser

+/-10% tolerance range (10.8 to 13.2 volts).

The consequence of this being that as the loading on the 5 and/or 3.3 volt rails increases, the voltage on the 12v rail rises from an open circuit low of 11ish volts to a high of 13ish volts. Generally, the loading on these rails under typical PC use results in less extreme departures from the 12v rail's nominal voltage than will occur under such atypical use as supplying all of the output power via just the 12v rail.

Since the internal cooling fan in the PSU itself is powered from the 12v rail, a hint of this effect can be detected by the quieter than usual operation when the PSU is being tested on no load by the expedient of linking the PS wire to a ground wire when it's only connected to the mains in isolation from any MoBo/peripheral connections (a quick 'n' dirty check that the PSU is not a DoA unit).

However, the resulting 10.8v on a 20A rated 12v rail powering a 10A

12vdc pump motor load will probably still suffice to run the pump at a lower, yet still sufficient speed to perform its basic task so such repurposing of a PC supply may still prove an effective alternative solution to a more expensive 10A 13.8v smpsu PSU.

I'm not saying a PC PSU can't be used to power 12v devices, simply stating that you need to be aware of this very common characteristic of most PC PSUs when used in this way.

Reply to
Johnny B Good

Strange. The Hippo I referred to doesn't need to be fully submerged or anything like it. So long as the water covers the

3mm gap at the bottom it just works!

Probably the closest it has come to being submerged was when we came back from holiday once and my wife found about 9" of water at the foot of the cellar stairs. It turned out there been a burst water main in the road outside and our neighbour said it had taken five days to persuade the water company to come and fix it!

Fortunately, the pump was ready for use, as always, so hose out of the coal hole and plug into mains and wait until it was safe to go down in the cellar and turn the gas and water back on again. Fortunately, because of the fridge/freezer, we didn't turn the electricity off!

Reply to
Terry Casey

Ah! Reading down the thread in order, I hadn't seen your reply today. As I said before, our's never came with a mud filter, so just the 3mm depth needed.

Reply to
Terry Casey

I don't - SO threatened me with incessant nagging if I kept any more useful bits of stuff, when the last machine died. (I do have a whole machine stashed away, but that's "waiting to be fixed" and "too good to break".)

Reply to
Rob Morley

Actually, 12.74mm minimum depth to prime it. The 3mm was the minimum depth before it starts sucking air. Compared to the rest, both excellent performance parameters! If I was looking to buy a ready made solution,

*that* would be my choice of pump. :-)

Who knows? I just might decide to buy one anyway if only as a 'charm' to ward off the attentions of Sod on my foul water drainage system. You'd think ownership of three sets of drain rods (one repurposed from duct rods) would be enough to thwart Sod's Law but I'd prefer not have my bluff called and have to *actually* get my hands so filthy yet again. Adding a pump to the mix of precautions should provide additional insurance against both Murphy's and Sod's Laws which, after this recent experience, seems an all too desirable thing.

I'm about to buy a set of 7AH SLAs to recommission my 2KVA basement UPS to guard against mains outages before Murphy or Sod realises I've been without UPS protection these past two years or so. You might recall my reference to the purchase of a 1.2KVA inverter genset from our local, recently built Lidl store on the Sunday afternoon which my search for

250mL of lube oil had triggered the discovery of the basement flood and the birth of this thread.

As it happened, I did locate a half full litre bottle of 10W-40 lube oil, supplied with (or bought for) a previous Aldi sourced 2.8KVA conventional genset which had proved totally incompatible with my basement SmartUPS2000 (the bottle has a label tied to it specifying its intended use).

The lightweight inverter genset specifies 15W-40 lube oil so this half litre's worth of 10W-40 makes for a slightly over-specced substitute, leaving me just the task of buying a gallon's worth of unleaded and a set of batteries for the UPS so I can properly test my hypothesis that only an inverter genset is free of the over-volting issue that afflicts normal alternator output gensets when faced with relatively modest amounts of leading current loads (eg excess capacitive loadings - a mere 4700nF in the case of the 2.8KVA genset proving sufficient to send its 230v rated output north of the 275v mark, never mind the 9400nFd's worth built into the mains input circuit of the SmartUPS2000!).

I'd been hanging on for over a year awaiting Lidl's next batch of 1.2KVA (pk) inverter gensets to arrive in their stores when I spotted, completely out of the blue, a half pallet's worth (4 or 5) at the bargain price of 99 quid rather than at their more usual 129 quid price point. That low price was an unexpected bonus, matching the price paid by another 'jammy' poster to this news group nearly two years back who'd discovered his 99 quid bargain hidden underneath a pile of clothing in the "Reduced To Clear" bin in another Lidl store (the lucky git!). Suffice to say, that was the very first item placed into the XYL's shopping trolly that Sunday afternoon. :-)

At the time when I read that lucky git's posting, my thought was, "Yeah, at that price, even though it's way under-powered for my needs, it's still worth a punt just to prove that the 600 quid, cheapest model of the type that I've been able to track down, 3KVA rated inverter genset would solve the UPS issues that I've suffered with that cheap 180 quid 2.8KVA conventional genset I'd bought from Aldi a year or three earlier.".

I've since rethought my requirements and reached the startling conclusion that a 1KVA continuous (1.2KVA peak) rated inverter genset should just about suffice to keep the lights on (now all LEDs), along with the central heating pump, master TV set and my desktop PC and NAS box and network kit as well as the fridge and, with careful management, even the chest freezer!

It did help somewhat that the SmartUPS2000 had proved itself capable of supporting the 25 to 30 amp degaussing surge of a 19 inch colour monitor without tripping out when on battery power but I suspect the toughest startup load transient of a chest freezer compressor still pales into insignificance compared to the degaussing surge loading of that now long since disposed of 19 inch CRT colour monitor.

The genset may be able to handle such a surge loading without the backup of the SmartUPS in any case. The trick here is to manually control the freezer compressor run times by switching to "Fast Freeze" so that it can be left switched off for 18 or more hour periods of the day and only allowing restarts during no to light loaded periods of the day. The fridge presents a similar if less harsh startup surge loading regime but shouldn't prove too problematical. In any case, the UPS should take care of any "Oops!" moments if the fridge picks a bad time to stress the genset.

Obviously, a 2.5 to 3 KVA (continuous) rated inverter genset would be a more optimal solution to protracted power outages but electric lighting and TV entertainment with a freezer full of food, along with a fridge's worth of chilled comestibles, is a far better option than making do without central heating, TV entertainment or internet access and having to rely upon candles or Tilley lamps to keep the house lit even when the use of a more marginally sized 1KVA(continuous) genset demands fairly tight hands on management.

BTW, if anyone is considering such an emergency power setup to keep the normal house lights burning (along with a small selection of 'critical appliances'), any changeover switch or relay contacts will need to be rated for a minimum of twice the mains supply voltage upper limit of

265vrms (530vrms - preferably 600vac or higher).

With plug in appliances, this requirement can be neatly sidestepped by manually unplugging them from their normal ring main sockets and plugging them into a seperate emergency genset power socket (typically via a mains extension lead). It's only when you want to run the existing lighting circuits from the genset, rather than rig up an entirely seperate lighting circuit, that you need to specify 600vac switch/relay contacts.

Reply to
Johnny B Good

I tested the overload behaviour of my 1kVA inverter generator. For modest overloads, it drops the output from 230V to 210V for about 3s. If the overload is sustained then it cuts out. This means that motor loads such as my small angle grinder can be started.

It is happy driving computers and other capacitive loads as expected.

John

Reply to
jrwalliker

The user guide for the Parkside PGI 1200 B2 claims a 5 second overload sustain of 1.2KVA with a maximum continuous load rating of 1KVA. I estimated a fivefold startup load from the freezer for its 70 watt steady running state, about 350W peak. That's only an educated guess but I think it's in the 'Ball Park'.

Assuming I time a freezer switch on for no or very little load, I'd have to have underestimated the peak by a factor of three to be in trouble. I'll know for certain when I've finished commissioning the UPS in readiness for the genset's first run (no point starting it up until I have the UPS back in commission).

At the moment I've got the UPS sat on my workbench connected to a 48v battery pack of 7A SLAs (a brand new set of alarm batteries) after opening the inverter case to access VR4 (the float charge voltage setting pot)[1] which I've now got set to 54.2v with the battery disconnected (UPS disabled - it drops to 53.9/54.0 v when enabled). I'm allowing it some 'warming up time' to let it settle before I close everything up and return it to its basement location.

I obviously need to increase the voltage slightly to account for the small discrepancy between enabled and disabled charging operation. I'm aiming for a float charge voltage of 54.1/54.2 volts (13.525/13.55 volts per SLA battery). My big mistake with the other battery packs had been to try and set it to 55.2v (13.8v per SLA battery) without disconnecting the battery, relying on the batteries having reached full charge after several days of charging and therefore at their limiting voltage. Months later, that limiting voltage had crept up to 55.5 volts. Naively, I didn't think the extra 0.3v was of any significance back then so left it alone. I've since come to realise that that was a big mistake. :-(

Float charging at a constant 13.8v per 6 cell pack 24/7 365 days a year is bad enough without pushing it even higher to almost 13.9v! I'm not going to make *that* mistake again so I'm setting the enabled float charge voltage to 54.2v. I'd rather sacrifice a few percent of new battery autonomy for an extra two or three years of *useful* service life thank you very much, APC! ("Consumables" my arse!).

Getting back on topic, it looks like I'm going to be paying my local MachineMart a visit tomorrow to pick up the Hippo Pump that Terry Casey recommended. Despite all our valiant efforts in clearing our blocked drain, I'm still seeing water ingress into the basement. It's been a dry day today so it's a bit of a puzzle as to the true nature of our elevated water table and I'm beginning to wonder whether there's a leaking water main nearby.

I shut off our stopcock about an hour ago to test for the unlikely event that we have a sneaky leak somewhere. I turned the bathroom basin cold tap on half an hour later to test and, worryingly, only got a short trickle. The groundfloor cold taps produced the expected flow, suggesting there may be a leak in the first floor plumbing but if there is, it's a damned quiet leak considering its effect on the local water table.

I'll give it another hour or so before I take another look at our pond in the coal hole to see whether shutting the water off has had any positive effect on the situation. TBH, I'll be totally flabbergasted if it has.

[1] The circuit diagram sheets for this ancient UPS are dated "7/7/93" making the design, if not its manufacture, almost a quarter of a century old! Although it's microprocessor controlled, I can't recall seeing any options in its command set regarding float charging voltage settings which I believe much later models have. In any case, the settings in this model seem to have been locked against any changes being made. It's just as well that there is a "VR4 Pot" for adjusting the float charging voltage or else I'd be 'stuffed' with regard to improving the life of my "Consumables".
Reply to
Johnny B Good

What is the real-world temperature within the UPS case? Check how the battery manufacturer de-rates their charge voltage per degree above 25°C or whatever they set as 'normal'.

Reply to
Andy Burns

Johnny

As said lucky git I remembered that when I visited a Lidl at opening time on Sunday Morning and saw a similar pile of generators. Didn?t look too hard as my target purchase was elsewhere but did notice the boxes looked more rectangular than the one I obtained which was a cube. Whether the model has been changed much I haven?t had time to look and at that price point it doesn?t really matter,it will either work for you or not and not too great a loss if it doesn?t. I haven?t used mine in anger for running in a power cut yet,the supply has been quite robust since purchase. Another resident of the village borrowed it for a night to run a moth trap in a field and it ran ok but it was lightly loaded, I?ve used an electric chainsaw on it on a couple of occasions such sawing up some fallen branches on a roadside and it coped. Nice and light to pop in the car for that.

My target on Sunday was the wildlife cameras, normally I?m not one of those who chases bargains to the extent of arriving at store open time but was glad I did on this occasion as they only seemed to have about 10 on sale, I picked up two and all had gone by 20 mins. I did some other shopping and then noticed an old chap looking a bit crestfallen at the empty bin,he had made a visit specially to purchase one and had already missed out at another store only about 5 miles away, so I let him have one of the two I had. I already have a Bushnell and a little acorn so didn?t need to be greedy.

GH

Reply to
Marland

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