Tempest in a Sump Pump

It's packed at Victrola, as Capitol Hill has power--anything south of Jefferson (all of the Central District, basically) does not. Ours went out some time before midnight last night. Not such a lamentable situation ultimately (no trees fell on our house, but to wake up without wireless, augh!), unless you have a sump pump in your basement that requires electricity to push out all the groundwater pouring in around your house. Which we do. And so we bailed. And bailed and bailed. Every bucket that went out the back door was a slow war against the Sisyphean water dripping back in through an elaborate drain system that works beautifully when there's power.

Thankfully the rain abated sometime around 4:30-5ish in the morning and we got a few hours of fitful, anxiety-dream filled sleep as our 100-year old house creaked and screamed with every whiplash assault by the wind. Mr. Seattlest pointed out that the worst we'd endured was a relatively sleepless night (and possibly another one or two this weekend) and neither was our house washed away--or even flooded--nor was anyone harmed. This morning, the Lowes down on Rainier was without power, but somehow was still open. They had to escort you around the store (no lights on, no heat) and there were huge lines to checkout. Were they running credit cards manually and writing down people's sales on paper? We don't know, because the employee at the door informed us they don't have any generators so we opted out of our escorted tour in the dark. Most people in line were looking to exchange their propane tanks, which thankfully we'd done on a lark last week (and we have a gas range and stove at home--everything in the freezer, on the other hand, is a different story). Anyone know anything about battery back-up systems for a sump pump?

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Courtney in News on December 15, 2006 2:20 PM

Comments [rss]

bryan

A small gen set is a good choice if you experience extended power outages as it appears you are. The trick is recognizing the need to turn on the small generator and then doing so before the sump pit fills and it’s too late. Most of the flooding situations I’m familiar with (I live in the Midwest) involve short duration power outages caused by thunderstorms were a couple of inches of rain might fall in an hour. The other common situation is frozen outlet pipes or main AC pump failure. I’m not a plumber but do own a small company in Iowa that builds backup sump pumps.

Courtney

That depends Bryan, are you a plumber? Seriously though, thanks for the info. We looked at some options online and concluded we'd be in for about $500, and figured a small generator that could power that plus the freezer would be better worth the dough.

Bryan

A backup sump pump typicly will run off of 12volt marine style battery and use a DC pump to remove the water in place of your AC pump while power is out or to suplement your AC pump if water is pouring in very quckly. If needed to run exptended periods you can use your car battery and regarge the backup battery with your vehicle

For a do it your sefler plan on spending about $400-500 for a good system and about 2-4 hours installation

If you have a plumber do it you will spend around $1k or so. Do you need more info?

COMTE

Doesn't seem very practical: I mean, wouldn't you have to hook up something like 10 12V car batteries in series in order to generate enough voltage to run a 110V sump? Plus, you'd need some sort of power converter to change the DC in the batteries to AC for the pump. And not sure you'd have enough amps (or is it watts?) in that configuration to run it for very long; my basic electronics knowledge hasn't been used much since high school.