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

[Johnny B Good]

The genset *was* rather a snug fit in the box so unless there was extra padding in the one you'd bought, it might well be a different model despite having the same output specification (1KVA cont./1.2KVA peak).

I appreciate the response. :-) As you pointed out, at that price point (cheapest genset yet!) it's well worth a punt. In my case, even if it can't handle the freezer startup surge, it's worth it just to prove that there *is* a way to combine a sub-50KVA genset with a 2KVA UPS. :-)

At the time, the cheapest 3KVA inverter gensets I could track down were a still considerable 600 quid or so. Even though that was only about a third of the price of a brand new Honda inverter genset of that rating, it still represented a sizeable investment so I did my usual and procrastinated over making such a purchase. You could say that my motto is "If in doubt, procrastinate!" since this strategy has served me quite well over the past half century or so. :-)

The last time that Lidl had advertised the sale of these gensets some 6 months or so back, they failed to materialise in any of their stores apparently, according to one Lidl shop assistant I queried, due to them being recalled for some unexplained reason. Their appearance this time round was totally unannounced and it was pure dumb luck that I happened to accompany my XYL on her shopping trip when I spotted this most unexpected surprise. Their remarkably low price was just icing on the cake (I'd have bought one anyway even if they'd been priced at their previous price of 129 quid).

Even though it's been 4 days (and counting) since I made my purchase, I've yet to fire it up to test it out. The main reason for the delay being my basement flooding problems, compounded by my desire to get back to square one with the UPS setup that I want to test it with. I got a set of batteries today for the UPS and I now have it set not to cook my new set of "consumables".

Happily, I already had a half a litre's worth of 10W-40 lube oil to prep the genset and just need to buy 4 or 5 litres of unleaded to fuel it up. I can swing by a petrol station tomorrow when I visit MachineMart to pick up the Hippo water pump that Terry had recommended (I'm still having water ingress issues in the basement).

With luck, I might be able to say whether it is a functional or a DoA genset by tomorrow afternoon. It's like the Schroedinger?s Cat thought experiment question - right now it's both dead and alive and I won't know which it is until I take that(or those) first (few) pull(s) on the starter cord. I don't usually wait more than an hour or two between purchase and testing but real life rather got in the way and spoilt my fun. :-(

[Johnny B Good]

This particular model of APC UPS, a SmartUPS2000, is a split design where the inverter/control gubbins is housed in a separate box which sits atop of a battery box. I purchased the unit 2nd hand at a radio ham rally sans battery box so have had to connect to a separate battery bank on the shelf below the one that the UPS sits upon.

The shelving unit is one I made up from dexion shelving with a supplementary MDF shelf slung under the top shelf using threaded stud iron to house a set of 25AH and 7AH SLAs which have now long since been scrapped. The middle dexion shelf below that still houses my second lot of cheap 36AH car batteries, also long since knackered and awaiting disassembly for carting off to my local scrappy when I get a round tuit.

This means that the batteries are even more isolated from the heat of the UPS inverter/control components than normal (which was pretty well isolated to begin with) being essentially at the cellar's ambient temperature somewhere around the 12 to 15 deg C mark making the UPS temperature somewhat immaterial in this case. Despite the cool conditions, the use of a 13.8v per 12v SLA float charging setting still managed to shorten the life of the battery packs through accelerated corrosion.

The dexion shelving housing the UPS and its batteries lives in the very same coal hole part of the basement that provides early warning of flooding which this time round I'm beginning to suspect may be due to a leaking water main modulating the local water table.

I just checked the water level in the coal hole a couple of hours ago, about an hour after I turned the mains water supply back on, and it has now dropped about an inch or so, coinciding with the late night drop in mains water pressure that I typically notice just after midnight.

It seems the blocked drain wasn't to blame this time round, merely a discovery prompted by my checking it for a repeat performance of it causing basement flooding some 30 years earlier. Despite my managing to successfully unblock the drain, the basement flooding issue most definitely hasn't gone away this time round and all the signs suggest a strong possibility of a water main leak (a lack of recent rainfall and no foul smell to the water leaking in).

I'll be phoning the water company tomorrow to report the problem as well as getting hold of a suitable water pump to keep the flooding under control whilst I wait for the water company to respond (I'm expecting some resistance to acknowledging their responsibility in this matter).

[tony sayer]

.

Do! There're usually very helpful and its in their own interest to clear up any leaks!

[newshound]

Hefty? A wall wart will give you 2 amps, which will drive one of the small pumps. It's not as if you need a huge flow rate.

I have to confess the Franken-solution has a certain appeal to me too :-)

[newshound]

My wife doesn't venture into the workshop (where I keep many such things). Going somewhat OT, one of our kids has just had his offer accepted on a garden flat in London, and I was delighted to see there is a shed in the garden. Well, actually it is a poncy thing which they call a chalet, but it will still serve as a shed.

[Johnny B Good]

You'd think so but after describing my problem and suspicions to the United Utilities "Report a Leak" customer services chap early this afternoon, the earliest appointment I could get for an engineering visit was the 25th of April.

I mentioned our lead service pipe but was told that all pipework within the boundary of the property was the property owner's responsibility, including the issue of replacing the old lead service pipe. Long gone are the days of a caring nationalised water industry thanks to M. Thatcher and co. :-(

If they want me to take responsibility for all the pipework from their street stopcock onwards, then they'll jolly well have to make sure that I have a key and access to a working stopcock before I accept such responsibility. It'll be interesting to see what their engineers have to say on the matter.

Anyhow, with that in mind, I took another look at the Clarke Hippo pump recommended by Terry here:

followed by looking at the "CUSTOMERS WHO BOUGHT THIS ALSO BOUGHT" section below which lead me to this gem:

and then onto this:

followed by this:

before I eventually landed up looking at this:

Since it was so much cheaper, could fit into my sump standpipe and didn't need extra optional accessories (other than for a 10m coil of 1 inch garden hose to stretch the supplied 3m outlet hose from the sump pipe location out to the back door), I decided to purchase that instead of the Clarke Hippo pump. At a mere £20.39, I thought it was well worth a punt.

I know I initially decried such a pump on the grounds of the cost of an additional 12vdc supply but since Clarke claim a modest current draw of just 4.5A and I already have a 13.5v 10A smpsu to hand anyway (as well as a 12AH SLA bought 2nd hand from a local flea market 4 or 5 years ago for the princely sum of 5 quid), I decided it was well worth a punt at less than a third the price of the Hippo pump.

When I got my 'bargain pump' back home, I tested it out with the 12AH SLA battery on the modest pool of water that awaited, extending the outlet hose over the backdoor threshold with about 6 metre's worth of garden hose off cuts I had to hand. I was able to just reach the puddles with this setup but it was enough to prove its efficacy at lifting the unasked for water out of the coal hole.

I've now got a choice of drilling through 18 inches of brick to directly route the outlet hose onto the drive by the front door or else buy another 10m coil of garden hose to replace my 6 metre's worth of joined up hoses so I can drop the pump into the sump pipe to pump out via the back door.

The former choice is a neater more permanent solution but involves some hard work. The latter just involves parting with a little more cash and the more fiddly process of throwing a hose up the basement steps and out through an open back door each time we need to "Man the Pumps".

For now at least, I'm going to buy the extra garden hose required for the "Quick 'n' Dirty" fix since it'll do the job for now and I can reconsider the more elegant solution at my leisure when the novelty of laying out a hose to an open backdoor on a regular basis starts wearing thin.

The modest pumping rate of 16.5 litre per minute might seem a little marginal but compared to using a wet 'n' dry vac cannister as a 20 litre bucket in a 'One bucket chain', it's a much superior solution, even allowing for the 15 minute per half hour duty cycle limitation[1].

The pump is specified to produce 15psi/1 bar of pressure but whether that's at the rated 16.5 litres per minute flow rate or just the barest of trickles is not spelled out. I guess I can check that out later with a measuring jug and a stopwatch once I've bought the extra 10 metre length of garden hose to let me pump the sump out to the back door. Whatever flow rate I measure out of the backdoor will obviously be improved upon with the more direct exit route onto the driveway by the front door so it'll be interesting to get some measure of the pump's performance even under this less than ideal condition.

[1] My problem is less to do with a sudden and overwhelming inundation than it is to do with a slow but persistent rise of water level that needs to be kept at bay for hours on end. A high capacity pump would spend most of its time idle, waiting for the level to rise sufficiently in the sump for it to have something to work with. I think this little pump will suffice but if I'm wrong, I'll have only 'wasted £20.39' in discovering the error and it's easy enough to purchase a better one later on when one has proof positive of the need for a more expensive pump.

[spuorgelgoog]

Don't you have a catflap for the hose?

Owain

[Johnny B Good]

No cat! :-)

[Johnny B Good]

It's true that I need a modest flow rate that can be sustained sufficiently to outpace the rising water level but even the modest 16.5 litres per minute at a 50% duty cycle of the small 12vdc pump that I did land up buying from MachineMart today claims a 4.5A requirement (which I thought was quite modest). Since I already had a 13.5v 10A smpsu to hand, along with a 12AH SLA in serviceable condition, it seemed worth taking a punt at a mere £20.39. :-)

TBH, I doubt a small enough pump to keep the current demand within the

2A limit of a 12v wallwart would be up to the job. However, despite my original rejection of your advice, I reconsidered it in the light of the specs shown in the manual I downloaded this afternoon (one of many such pdfs btw) and bought this pump:

which slides rather neatly down my sump standpipe.

I just need to extend its supplied 3 metre outlet hose another 10 metres to pump out from the standpipe location to out of the backdoor. All I could manage this afternoon was a basic test on the more accessible coal hole puddles which suggests that it's likely to suffice for the job in hand.

That's going to be a project for another day. The problem with using electrodes dipping into the water to detect the level, as one sump pump manufacturer demonstrated to its trusting customers, is the risk of false detection due to water film bridging across the electrode insulator.

A float operated sensor is more reliable if designed carefully or else the use of a pressure sensor as used by the washing machine manufacturers can prove an effective alternative. I'll probably pick the simplest to implement, a simple float operated switch, but it depends on how complex a controller I decide to fabricate. I need not only to prevent dry running but also to limit the duty cycle to a max of 15 minutes per half hour of run time with this pump so there'll likely be some electronics involved that otherwise wouldn't have existed which would have made the float operated microswitch the obvious solution.

I did find the W/M pump but not assembled onto a board as I seemed to recall, just the bare pump and its inlet hose. TBH, it was all starting to look a more fiddly job than I CBA to spend time on, hence my continuing search for a ready made solution, culminating in the purchase of that Clarke MSP12 - 12 Submersible Transfer Pump that I discovered as a 'Sale Item' on MachineMart's website earlier today (Friday).

As a "Thought Experiment" it was all 'Fine on Paper' but quite frankly, I didn't have enough motivation to spend any time on translating it into actual hardware. In the end, it was your suggestion that won the day, even if it was in a round about way (and tipped by the sale price of the pump in MachineMart).

[Johnny B Good]

I was on the point of buying the Hippo pump from our local MachineMart on Friday but did my usual 'last minute browse' on their website to make sure there wasn't a better alternative I'd failed to spot which resulted in my purchasing that 12v submersible pump kit that would (and does!) fit into my sump standpipe. There wasn't enough hose for me to pump from the standpipe out to the backdoor so I was only able to test it on the more accessible puddles which proved it was up to the job.

This morning, my son discovered that the coal hole had completely drained out. When I looked at it just after 1pm, even the 'mini-sumplet' next to the entrance showed only a moist looking muddy bottom. I've no doubt I could pump out another 50 or 60 litres from the sump stand pipe if I cared to try but without a 10 metre hose extension, there's not a lot of point (I don't fancy running another bucket chain).

I was planning on buying a 10 metre coil of 1 inch garden hose today (Saturday) to allow me to pump the sump out to the back door but I got roped into supervising my sprog's offer of help in clearing out the (largely) rotting collection of 'valuable junk' that was cluttering up the coal hole. As a result, he chauffeured 2 loads of 'junk' to the tip and I never made it to our local Lidl/Aldi to buy the hosepipe.

With the coal hole finally properly dry, I've decided to have a go at installing a more direct and permanent drain hose route instead of buying more hosepipe to take the water out of the backdoor.

There's a good chance it'll be dry enough this afternoon (Sunday) for me to probe one of the front door threshold vent holes with a long masonry bit attached to my ancient B&D drill. With luck, it should poke through the plasterboard sheeting that was nailed to the underside of the hallway entrance joists over the coal hole which should provide a guide as to how best to route the final length of 15mm copper pipe outlet to which to attach the pump's flexible hose. Hopefully, I can avoid drilling a 3/4 inch hole through 18 inches' worth of Victorian brickwork and do the job 'smarter, not harder'. :-)

Sod's Law decrees that I'll never suffer another flood once I have an effective 'no fuss' solution in place (it'll be merely a matter of lowering the pump into the sump pipe and switching it on once I've sorted out a fixed and direct route for the drain hose). I can sort out a sump level sensor at my leisure, along with a simple controller to operate the pump on a strict 50% duty cycle (15 minute on/15 minutes rest) as well as avoid dry running.

I won't be leaving the pump permanently installed in the sump pipe in order to avoid premature failure since the user guide/manual advises that it be stored clean and dry between sessions of use. It might be rated for total immersion but I suspect indefinite periods of total immersion for months at a time might finally prove too much of a strain on its waterproof seals so I'll not be taking any chances in its care and maintenance. It's only a 'cheap solution' if you don't have to buy a new pump every 12 months or so.

This is the penultimate episode in my 'basement pump saga'. I'll post a final 'episode' after I've finished the permanent installation as per the above plan and report my results, hopefully in the next day or two.

[Peter Hill]

This one needs initial priming but with a one way "foot valve" to stop it draining back it doesn't need further priming. Problem is if water is dirty it can be trapped in foot valve and allow the suction pipe to drain. Also dirty water may wear the plastic impeller. So the foot valve also needs a filter.

Centrifugal pump can not be "self priming". It needs a piston/diaphragm or helical. Piston/diaphragm pumps will have simple one way delivery valves and can't pump dirty water.

Proper dirty water self priming is not cheap.

[Johnny B Good]

I was looking at those last Friday before I decided to take a punt on their 12 volt 'special' for a mere £20.39 (Clarke MSP12 - 12V Submersible Transfer Pump) which proved to be adequate for my particular problem.

It was the need for the foot valve and other accessories that made the

12v pump so attractive - practically everything I need for my planned installation apart from a yard or so's worth of 15mm copper outflow pipe to direct the water out onto my driveway next to the front door step almost immediately above my sump standpipe.

booster-pump-240v

Not at all suitable for pumping out a basement sump. That's intended for boosting shower water pressure and the like.

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Blimey! You weren't kidding about it not being cheap! That works out at a smidgen more than 23 times the price I paid for the 12v pump!

I was hoping I could make a start on installing the outflow pipe section this afternoon but the weather took a turn for the worse by the time I'd bought myself 5 litres of unleaded to fuel up the inverter genset, dosed the sump with the required 250ml of 10W-40 oil and set it up for a test run only to discover it was faulty (possibly due to an overload from the PF correction inductor I'd forgotten to disconnect from the feed cable running from the back door down into the basement).

I had my lad help me start the genny (I'm finding it very hard work to yank on a starter cord these days - mind you, even 15 years ago it was hard work trying to start a cheap, temperamental two stroke 720W petrol generator so no great surprise there). As things turned out we found ourselves having to restart it several times to reset the "Overvolt" trip before discovering it was tripping out all by itself (no lead plugged into its singular 13A outlet socket) within a few seconds of each start up.

The second restart to reset the initial overload from the dozen or so

400VA transformer primaries I'd been using as a PF correction inductor for the previous 2.8KVA genset (and forgotten to disconnect), provided a few second's worth of power for the UPS to pass through to the load before cutting out, never to reset the overvolt alarm thereafter.

Unfortunately, by the time I'd drained the oil and fuel to return it, it had gone 4 O'clock, Lidl's Sunday closing time. Not only that but the weather had turned showery making it a little dangerous to be using a mains voltage electric drill outside in order to probe under the hallway floorboards with a long masonry drill bit via one of the door sill vent holes in order to discover the best route for the coal hole sump pump outflow pipe. The hoped for appearance of the drill bit through the plasterboard that had been nailed to the hallway floor joists should eliminate the guesswork involved at this stage of the project.

All in all, a rather frustrating afternoon. I rather doubt there'll be any inverter gensets in stock for the Lidl staff to exchange with my faulty unit tomorrow so it looks like I'll have to console myself with a refund and keep on looking for my next inverter genset bargain.

If I'm going to have to spend a few hundred quid on a less marginally rated inverter genset, I'll be opting for an electric start model after all of the faff I had with pull starting that lightweight "Suitcase" model today (the lack of mass doesn't help any when it comes to pull starting these gensets).

Looking on the bright side, the coal hole still remains nice and dry. I imagine I can still pump water from the sump standpipe but I'll wait until I've finished the outflow plumbing job before running the pump again.