A sump pump constantly running can be a good thing or, a bad thing depending on whether it is pumping water. Of course even if it is pumping water, constantly running is an indicator that the pump capacity is very closely matched to the flow of the ground water, and that should be a cause for concern. A slight increase in ground water flowing into the pit may overwhelm the pump and flood your basement or, a pump failure will as well. There are a few things you should check when you find a sump pump running constantly just to be sure that you are not close to being flooded.
One of the first checks that should be made on a constantly running sump pump is if the pump is indeed pumping water and operating close to its full capacity. There are sometimes things that can happen which can affect the pumping ability of a sump pump and it should be checked for proper operation. Often sand and silt flows into a sump pit carried in by the water, which then erodes the impeller vanes as it is pumped out with the water causing the pump to become ineffective. Sometimes impellers are made out of a metal that may corrode, which results in an impeller that has no vanes left to pump the water. A discharge pipe or hose can become clogged, broken underground or, in cold areas if it doesn’t drain dry after each pump cycle can freeze. When the discharge is blocked the sump pump deadheads and runs constantly usually with the water in the pit becoming warm or, even hot. Another common cause is the discharge pipe or hose coming loose from the pump in this case you will see water circulating in the pit. One of the requirements for installing a sump pump with many pumps is a 3/16” hole to be drilled in the discharge pipe a short distance above the pump before the check valve. When a sump pump pit goes dry during a period of drought it may dry out. When the pit refills with water the hole is needed to allow the air to get out of the pump allowing the pump to prime. If the pump is air bound because of water above the check valve holding air in the pump, water cannot reach the impeller so the pump will run constantly without pumping. In any case if you can see the water discharging from the pump it is a good indicator that the pump is operating properly.
If your sump pump is constantly running and you have found that the pump is pumping correctly you next should consider the ground water level, the ground water volume, and the pumping capacity. Sometimes the best thing to do is add pumping capacity and or, back up pumps, while other times simply raising the pump a few inches can allow the ground water to reach its own level without constant pumping being needed. During the dry period of the year is a good time to play with the pump level if the pump is running constantly even then. Shut off the pump and see how high the water gets in the pit. Naturally if the water comes up and is going to overflow into the basement, you have a very high water level and the pump is needed. However, frequently the water will rise to a certain level in the pit without flooding the basement or even reaching the bottom of the concrete slab. If the water level stops rising you should consider raising the level at which the pump turns on and allow the water level to remain at that level in the pit with the pump only turning on when it gets higher. You can also stretch this check into wetter periods of the year to fine tune the point at which the pump turns on. Sometimes people find that the pump was just set too deep into the water table causing it to pump water that didn’t really need to be pumped and when the pump was raised the running became infrequent and almost never ran constantly.
If your pump is running constantly and any time the pump is shut off the pit overflows then additional capacity and backup is something that you should strongly consider. The volume of ground water is too closely matched to your pumping capacity and any increase in ground water volume or, a pump failure as virtually guaranteed to cause a flooded basement. Back up pumps and power is strongly recommended, and the capacity of the back up pumping should be high enough to meet your needs.
You may want to consider other basement water proofing options as well such as curtain drains, regrading your property to divert water away from your home and installing drains for gutters and storm water to carry the water away from your home. Passive measures are always better than relying on a pump to get rid of the water.
Damage from a flooded basement can be very costly especially when appliances such as boilers, furnaces, HVAC air handlers, and water heaters can be severely damaged and often require replacement from flooding. The costs of using the services of an expert are trivial when you consider the cost of damage from flooding.
Holy smokes!
I can’t believe it. As always, the simplest solution was the answer. My sump pump was running every 15 minutes for the past several months. I had a bathroom put in the basement which required jack hammering out the floor, putting in the “up pump” system, then filling it all in and recementing and leveling the floor. When we had the 3′ +- deep hole open, a little water slowly filled in the bottom. A few days after the plumber left, I noticed the sump pump began running more often… and more… and more! Right now this spring it was going every 15 minutes. I thought – “Oh no, we opened up a spring under the house and I am going to flood out the basement eventually when the pump dies!”
Low and behold, as I did my research, I came upon this webpage and I bellieve you have solved the problem! Someone (not me) adjusted the rubber washers on the float on the sump pump, and set it too LOW! As you noted, it was below the water table, and with the heavy snow we had this winter, the water table is up, and as the last of the snow continues to melt it keeps the ground saturated! I lost a couple of nights sleep being awakened by the pump kicking on a 2:00 AM and hearing all the way up in the bedroom.
I checked the setting / water levels as you suggested, and I determined that the water table leaves a good 6″ of sump bucket left to fill when the water level stopped rising! So simple (and so dumb not to think of it two months ago!)! How could the plumber (or most likely his apprentice) turn off and lower the pump float and not think to reset it! I wish I could get lost sleep and worrying time back, but I guess I will settle for being thankful we didn’t really tap into “Old Faithful” under my house and set up a swimming pool in the basement!
I will still consider getting a back up system (battery or hydro) “just in case” we ever do have the storm of all storms that takes out the power and raises the water table too much too fast. I bet I can even get a reduction on my homeowners insurance to pay for it in the long run!
Any way, thanks for the insight, it saved my sanity! Like I said, the simplest answer most times usually is the best! Again, thanks – Drew
Hi Andrew,
Glad you got some use out of my article.
The plumbers probably adjusted the pump lower to aid in their ejector pit installation.
The pit liners have a tendency to want to float up on ground water which makes for a tough installation.
I would recommend using a battery powered backup pump over a water powered pump system. Have a look at this link for my recommendation.
Sleep well!
Redwood
Hello Redwood,
My sump pump also run constantly, and I’m pretty certain it is b/c my pit is much lower than the water table. I’ve been researching how deep a sump pit should be, and the norm seems to be about 20″. My pit is about 8-9 feet deep below my basement slab. Just today I unplugged my sump pump, and the water has risen about 3 feet, but doesn’t appear to be rising any further. I have a feeling that’s the water table line. I would like to raise my sump pump, but don’t know how. It is so deep, that I can’t get down there and lift it up. Could I pull it up from the pvc pipe? Also, how would you recommend raising it about 3ft? Gravel? I’m also concerned that my basement will begin to stink if I always have about 3ft of water sitting in my sump. Any advice you can give me would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Ryan
Hi Ryan,
I would raise it up.
If the water is stopped 6 feet below the basement floor you are far better than any basement with a sump pump I have ever seen.
Redwood
I too have found this article incredibly helpful. Thank you!!!
We have lived in our house for 10 years and our sump pump, if ever, went off very rarely (we never noticed it going off). The previous owners, in the disclosure, said the pit had been dry for years and they unplug the pump and then one winter with heavy snow the pit overflowed (I think probably January 1996 when we got 30 inches of snow then heavy rain two weeks later). We live near Philadelphia and got over 30 inches of snow in February then two heavy rains in March. A day after the storm three weeks ago, the old sump pump went on (for what we think may have been the first time or one of the first time) but the switch was broken. During the storm, we lost power for 3-5 hours and the pit never overflowed. My plumber, whom I love, put in a Zoeller 53 (I told him we want the Rolls Royce of sump pumps) and he placed it on bricks. The Zoeller went off every 8 minutes. Our pit is smallish–16 inches by 10.5 inches by about 21-22 inches deep. My complaint about the Zoeller is that it has a nonadjustable float and it is designed to only pump out 4 inches of water at a time but we end up with a net of only 3 inches of water, despite a check valve. I figured out that means that is only pumping out about 2.2 gallons at a time. Our pump goes on at about 9.5 inches from the bottom (as it is set on the bricks). After the first storm, it finally slowed down to every 33 minutes but after the storm last week it has been at 4 minutes for days, and finally slowing down a bit (to every 5 minutes).
A week after the first storm, I unplugged the pump for six hours. In the first two hours it went up a lot but in the last four hours it only went up about an inch and only 1/4 inch in the last hour. I tried this again right after the last storm, but only for 70 minutes. It went up a lot in 40 minutes, but a lot less in the last 30 minutes (but did rise even higher in that 70 minutes than it had in the 6 hour test).
My question is: given that we believe that the pump did not go on until after the first storm stopped and that the pump started running more often after the rain stopped after the second storm, is this a ground water issue? Friends in the general area who have sumps that always go on during storms have had theirs stopped but ours has been going for almost three weeks now. I am very concerned as we never worried about water in the basement. I think to feel better we’ll put in a backup pump, especially as our water rate is low enough that a backup could do the job if necessary (my plumber says many backups are not powerful to keep water out of the basement if the primary pump fails).
I forgot to mention that in the past 12 months we have gotten double the normal amount of precipitation. We had the most snow ever this winter as well (by a large margin too). I’m wondering if somehow the snowfall more than anything else is what could have changed the water table level as that is the most significant difference about this year when the pump is on versus the previous 10 years.
Hi Stacy,
Your plumber did indeed pick what I consider to be a great sump pump.
The Zoeller M-53 is one that I would install in my own home with great confidence.
There is a Zoeller model # BN-53 that comes without the built in switch and a adjustable piggyback switch is often used.
The switch on your sump pump could also easily be defeated and an adjustable piggy back switch model # 10-0055 could be used, but, with the size of your pit I feel it may be too small for reliable operation of the fully adjustable piggyback switch. There is a vertical piggy back switch model # 10-2041 that will replace the existing float giving your pump a 6 1/2″ cycle range which is ideal in a small diameter pit like yours.
Ideally I would consider installing a larger diameter pit. If you intend to install a backup pump most call for a minimum diameter pit of 18″ for enough room for installation of the backup. This will also give you a larger volume of water with each pump cycle.
Your plumber is correct when he says many back up pumps operate at lower flows. Some of the battery powered back up pumps are little more than a glorified bilge pump for a boat! I would encourage you to have a look at the Zoeller Aquanot I & II for battery powered back up sump pump that will closely match the output of your Zoeller M-53.
With 30″ of melting snow and heavy rains at the same time there is little doubt in my mind that the ground water has risen from the melting snow and the rain. The ground water often lags the water on the surface and continues to rise even after the storm subsides.
I hope this answers your concerns,
Redwood
I have a sump/drainage concern with a house we bought a few months ago. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
The home inspector wasn’t alerted, or didn’t alert us, to the fact that it wasn’t proper to have the water in the sump pit sitting about 4″ above the drain tile pipe and 8″ from the top of the pit. He didn’t understand the setup despite 10+ yrs as an inspector, and thought the fully submerged float switch was broken and the second float switch was for the Basement Watch Dog when in fact the built-in float was bypassed and the second float was piggybacked so the water could come up higher in the pit. I now gather the owner was tired of hearing the pump run. I knew little about sumps until this. Our last house had a sump pump that NEVER went off, even when we had torrential downpours. It had great drainage and a high basement. THIS house has a low basement and not-so-good drainage, plus its very close to the neighbors. To top it off, the rear neighbor is about 2′ above us. And we have small back yards. All things I didn’t quite get when we bought.
Hindsight is 20/20. I also now understand why the previous owner installed the “cool” backup electric generator system. It wasn’t so he could watch TV in a power outage. It was to keep the sump running if they lost power. He also wasn’t honest about water in the disclosure when we signed the contract. He stated there he never got water. He later told us the basement got a couple inches when the power went out for 12 hrs in a massive storm, the battery backup died, and his generator was at work. That, and the inspector’s boo-boo, may be grounds for legal action if we aren’t satisfied.
Fast forward. We get in the house, and another contractor there for something else tells us to lower the float since the drain tile outlet was under water, and every time the pump went off it had to empty the pit AND the drain tile. And it was soaking the ground. By now I am concerned enough to have a village inspector out, who confirms that is solid logic. I have no idea how many years the man had the drain tiles submerged, but I know this – the neighbor (whose house is ~12′ away) still has his set that way, and is convinced its correct. The village inspector thought the ground water was high due to snow melt and rain. That was mid March. Fine.
I didn’t like the mechanical float so I bought a Stak Enterprises Hi-Lo switch. You can adjust the range of on/off by inches, or feet, and place them independently anywhere in the pit you want. A great item.
So, I hooked up the hi-lo and had a nice 10″ range with the ON being beneath the drain tile pipe. The pump ran constantly for several days. I was told to expect this as the water table was likely very high due to snow melt, rain, and the wet drain tiles but time would lower it. We had a warm and dry run for 3 weeks, and things improved. It slowed a minute or two each day til it got to once every 30 minutes. Then, it rained an inch. Back to every few minutes for several days. It improved, took a while-like a week, but the next rain “reset” it back to a couple minutes and the cycle started over. UGH.
3 of the 5 downspouts go to a 4″ corrugated underground that runs to a bubbler 40′ from the house. The other 2 are channeled far away too, into sloping ground. The primary sump pump has its own bubbler far from the house. No signs of any seepage around the house, save the 3 cracks in the partial crawl which the seller fixed per contract. No seepage, no staining, no dampness. The basement is dry. Overhead sewers.
I decided to add a third, water propelled Water Commander MG 22 as a third backup for peace of mind. I had a good plumber do that and a few other things, like replace the cheap 3/4 HP Menard’s pump with a Zoeller N98 1/2 HP. All that is great, but I am still unhappy about the pump running so often. I want to get more to the source, and ebb the tide so-to-speak, BEFORE I have to run the pump(s) to move the water out.
In a soaking rain the other day the pump was running every 90 seconds, you could hear the water pouring in thru the drain tile even though it wasn’t a deluge or anything.
The water coming in is CLEAR, no dirt. AS clear as tap water. I tested twice, NO chlorine to speak of with cheap test kit (we’re on municipal Lake Michigan water). Water in pit has very high iron content (not seen in treated water in the area), like ground water would. Water bill is low. No soaked lawn patches – except near the bubblers. I ran garden hose down the pipes and downspouts to check for leaks. None found. All that implies GROUND WATER, I guess. And now, it hasn’t rained in 4 days, but the pump runs every 10 or 12 mins. and our back yard is still WET. 1″ under the mulch in the beds next to the bldg and the soil is MUD. Underground sprinkler system (which I hate) was turned OFF until just recently, so no leaks there.
If you’ve read this far you are wondering about the drainage. Sides SEEM OK, seem to run down away from house several feet. Front too. That’s good. The backyard is flatter close to the bldg, then pitches back to create a V in the ground between the houses. Not ideal drainage there, but we’re up to the brick in soil. We have little rear lawn, and a brick paver patio that’s flat and I am sure does little to aid in drainage esp. since the (BAD) installer didn’t slope it away from the house right IMO. i suspect the back is part of the problem if not the whole thing. May be our “smoking gun”.
I have run out of ideas. Am I doomed to have the running all the time? If it ran like it did in a good rain, but not a deluge, what’s in store for us? And I have no idea HOW the water gets into the drain tile 8′ below grade SO FAST when it rains. That is a mystery.
Our neighbors have the same problems, they dismiss it as normal. They say it slows in summer, til following spring. I HOPE SO. I have a hard time believing this is normal. I need to understand what’s delivering all that water to our drain tiles SO FAST. And why the pump runs so often.
Could it be, that the regular water table is above the drain tile? And the switch should be up there? Hope not.
THANKS!
Hi John,
It does sound like you do have a “wet” basement despite what the previous homeowner failed to disclose and the home inspector failed to detect. I’d recommend getting appropriate advice from a real estate attorney on what options you have.
What you have is a hodgepodge of many years of band-aids and I’d say that what you need is some professional help figuring out what to do with your water problem. The water table is indeed high and the drain tiles should not be covered with water or, sediment build up will eventually clog them.
Ideally you would want a drain system that works by gravity and does not rely on pumps and electricity to operate. Do you have storm sewers in the street in front of your home? Or, is there a location where a gravity drain can be run to and discharge without causing a nuisance? The professional you hire should be able to recommend a complete system comprised of drains in the yard and landscaping contours that actually get rid of the groundwater before it gets under your foundation or, at least minimize it.
I’m not a fan of electronic switches for pumps nor water powered backup pumps. The reliability of the electronic switches I do not think has matched the reliability provided by the good old fashioned tethered piggyback float switches. Water powered backup pumps have less than impressive pumping rates unless you have high pressure and then added to that you have an additional gallon of water for every 2 gallons pumped out in the water you are discharging.
If you do end up relying on pumps to keep your basement dry you should probably be looking at a duplex system for your main pumping system that can turn on a second pump if it is ever needed and runs alternately, sounding an alarm if one of the pumps fail. The cool generator system should be one that starts and transfers power automatically in the event of a power failure. Fuel for the generator is a consideration as well, usually matching the generator fuel to you home heating fuel is a good idea. Diesel if you heat with oil, natural gas or, lp gas are all options that will have you with plenty of fuel on hand.
Ideally you can get a pro that can design a system of landscape contours, trench and other drains that severely reduces the amount of water reaching your sump pit and or, can come up with a gravity drain for your sump pit as well.
Redwood
Thanks for the answer and help. I agree that a duplex system would be better and I considered this, I may reconsider. BTW the Water Commander moves quite a bit of water, we tested it last night. I know some people aren’t big fans of these but remember, this is 3rd in line and I actually hope never to need it. It’s a backstop for me, one last line of defense in case I am not there to run the generator. Yes the nat gas generator might be something we would consider, but again here it’s about expense. The power has only been out for more than an hour or two in this area once in 3 yrs I understand, and before that no one can remember the last time, so it may not be the best use of our $$.
I think your idea about moving the water away BEFORE it gets to the drain tile is a great one, and that’s our strategy. We have 3 pumps in place and a (manual) generator system with the cutover panel. The 4″ corrugated is junk, I rerouted the main discharge away from that last night. The tube was filled with water and within 30 mins it was empty. Where did it go? It leaked out, whether by design or by accident it went back into the ground and maybe back into the house. Maybe we ARE cycling some of the water. Other than moving the primary discharge to a quieter location, and running the 4″ PVC in place of that thin stuff, I may for now leave the WATER HANDLING alone and focus on the WATER DIVERSION part.
BTW as soon as I moved that primary discharge out of the corrugated, things seemed to improve MARGINALLY. I’ve been warned, if that is to make any difference it could take days to see the change.
One of the drainage guys wants us to go into the storm sewer with the primary sump discharge, that’s not allowed here except in hardship cases AND it’s VERY expensive. We’d be looking at that job starting around $10K.
I have some drainage people lined up to quote us on:
1) thinning the trees in back so more sun hits the yard.
2) installing a french drain and leech tanks out front to get the water away from the house
3) replacing that 4″ corrugated crap, esp for the primary pump, and running that into a leech tank way out front
4) possibly putting in rain gardens with plants and soil that wick up the water
5) grading more away from the house where we can in back (not much room for that), and getting our brick paver patio to slope away, not lay flat.
Does that sound like a reasonable approach?
THANKS
Hi John
I think you are on track with your ideas my only concern is that leaching into the front yard may have limited capacity and not be able to handle the total volume of water you have. Are you sure about not being allowed to tie into the storm sewer system. I can understand it if your area has a combined sewer where storm and sanitary sewers are combined but many locations now have upgraded to separate sewer systems where only the sanitary sewer go to water treatment and the storm sewers are separate. In this case most communities have no objections to tying in.
I agree the corrugated pipe is junk and I would look at using SDR-35 drain pipe which will give you a very reliable drain system. It is available with either cemented or, gasket joints and will be leak free with very little chance of root intrusion. The lesser grades often tend to crush flat when buried and IMHO are not worth installing.
Redwood
Believe it or not our village still requires hardship even though the sewers are separate. Most probably we wouldn’t meet the requirements. I had a village engineer come out six weeks ago or so. People around us have things much worse I gather, though for me ours is bad enough. And if we COULD sneak it in, the cost… too high. He said since our situation is really “normal”, we wouldn’t gain enough benefit form the cost. For now, I have to assume the storm sewer idea is tabled. We need to slope, divert and leech, where EVER possible. Even that will be expensive. All these are unexpected costs since we didn’t know this problem even existed.
According to neighbors and previous owner, all this effectively ceases in the summer. It’s a spring thing. I’ll reserve judgment til I see it with my own eyes.
I am going with the PVC when we do any underground piping at all. Of course we have buried gas, electric, and even a sprinkler system (hate it) so the contractor will have his work cut out for him. I have 2 meetings set up this week, and planning 2 more with others. Someone will have the right idea, and we’ll have to open the pocketbook ever more for this. Eventually, I will get it to where it should be, or close.
FYI the woman behind us, whose house is 2′ above us, told me her pump ran more this spring than ever. She was worried, but it stopped on its own 2 weeks ago. Maybe ours will stop soon too. Except they’re forecasting chance of showers 5 of the next 8 days. Ugh.
Maybe if you don’t mind I will post what the drainage people tell me.
Hi John,
I would like to hear what they have to say and I’m sure others would like reading the proposals as well.
Redwood
Update:
The front-runner contractor proposes to build a drain tile system around the house leading to a leech field in the front yard. We’ll tie all downspouts and sumps into this. The contractor has 20 yrs experience doing this and seems very confident. Gave us the best price, and seems to have the best handle on things. I will post the final $$ amt and specs after it’s done. What we’ve read online about these projects, they’ve really helped people solve or at least mitigate problems like ours. We’re optomistic. And we’re gonna ask the man who sold us the house to pay for the drain system, due to his failure to disclose to us the water issue in the basement.
Now we just need the village permit, which supposedly will be easy to get per the village engineer.
Yesterday we got 3″ rain in about 14 hrs, and we had 2 small ponds in our yard. Or rear n’bor’s runoff breached the earthen berm by the hedges and was flowing to our yard. Contractor will re-grade as part of the drainage project.
I also watched as water pooled on the patio 1′ from the house and soaked in, over and over. Same contractor will cut back the trees and re-lay the paver patio. Patio is a MUST DO, and costs as much as the French drain project. UGH.
FYI 3 hrs after rain started the sump pump went like mad, which leads me to the only viable conclusion that it’s runoff and rain water not ground water causing this problem. Today its down to every 3 mins. Yes maybe ground water from the wet winter and spring contribute, surely they do, but these extended bursts of pumping activity are tied to the rainfall. I understand that it can take 24-48 hrs, or more, for rain water to soak down to the water table in our area depending on your soil conditions. This comes just too quick to be the water table. Long term activity, probably water table. Short term, MUST be the rain. I am open to hearing arguments to the contrary.
To further mire this matter we also discovered the sprinkler system IS leaking. We had meter creep and 10″ water in the control box out back 5 days after 1″ rainfall. I shut it off and will prob nt fix it. Our one water bill so far seemed OK, but was from a reading taken before we turned the sprinkler on. Lo and behold, the leak is in the area I suspect as most problematic, just above the sump put and 4′ from the house where ground is always wet. 2 of the contractors told me, sprinkler leaks can create channels from the surface down to the footing drain tile and sump pit as water seeks its own level. Then rain water can use those same channels to accelerate their descent. Our window well there had 2″ standing water in it yesterday despite being covered. It soaked in but never got high enough to enter the clay pipe in there. All this goes to the sump pit.
I will post more once we get the project under way, prob. a few weeks. This is the last house I’ll ever buy, from now on its back to a newer constr. condo/townhouse with no basement.
Maybe when this is done I can sleep undisturbed at night again.
Any luck. I have moved into a house recently and am having similar issues. Two sump pumps. One runs about every minute unless there hasn’t been rain for a while. One every couple of minutes. No flooding yet, but can’t imagine this can last long.
Hi Brad,
I’m curious about your exact circumstances and how close they actually are to John’s situation.
How deep below the level of the basement floor will the water level rise to if you shut off the pump?
How deep under the floor are the pumps set?
Have you done everything possible to route storm water from the gutters away from the foundation?
Redwood
Thanks for your inquiry.
I don’t shut off the sump pumps for long, as I assume that is not a good idea. However, if I do turn them off, the water comes to maybe a foot or a bit less from the basement floor. We did raise the floats up originally. The only problem was that very soon thereafter we had a very hard rain and saw a bit of water come in along the base of a basement wall, so thought we might be overtaxing the system by raising the floats too much. So we put them down some again, but I was thinking that we should raise them up again.
I am going to start working on the down spouts. Some of them need to be diverted farther from the foundation, although some already are diverted underground away from the house. Also, the pumps still run even if it hasn’t rained for a number of days, so I don’t think that is really the issue.
Hi Brad,
The float switch levels sound like they could use some fine tuning. I’m assuming that you do not have tiles draining water from all around your foundation into the pit. If the water stops rising when it reaches a level about 1′ below the floor when it’s not raining you should probably consider leaving the water in the pit and not pumping it. Setting the pump to start pumping just above that level and pump the pit down to a level where the pit almost empties shutting off just before the pump draws air.
Bear in mind though that if you do not have tiles transporting water from around the foundation to the pit the draw-down of the water table will have a slope downward to the pit from outlying areas and if it gets to high the water will start entering through cracks in the foundation. Your fine tuning will need to include that in the equation. One thing you may consider is installing a second pit close to the area where you are getting the leaks eliminating the travel time for the water to get from that area to the pit so the water level in that area can be drawn down quicker allowing both pumps to be set at a higher level so they only run during wet occasions. This will give you added security towards a dry basement.
The single biggest factor you can improve on in most cases is making sure that all water from downspouts and sump pump discharges flow away from your basement. After that look into getting rid of water that flows downhill towards your home whether by surface drains or, curtain drains. Many people find the downspout and sump pump discharges alone are a big factor and improving them eliminates problems.
Redwood
The sump pump on my four year old home runs about every 45 sec. It only runs for 10 sec. or less because the pump has a very short float. When the house was built they put in two sump pump pits each with the tile at a different level. This was done so if the main pump quit working the water would rise up in the second high enough for the second pump to run. Shortly after moving in I experimented with the level of the pump in the main tank and found that if I unplugged it the main pit would not fill high enough for the secondary pump to run. I then raised the level of the main pump above the level of the tile inlet. The pump would then hardly ever run. This year I learned that what I had done was not good so I lowered the pump back down. Now the pump is back to running every 45 sec. My question is what exactly is the problem with having the pump higher than the inlet and what can be done if the level of the water table is higher than the inlet? Also will the pump gradually run less as the soil dries out from not having water in the tile? I am sick of listening to the pump run please help.
Hi Lorien,
The reason that you don’t want the tiles to flood is that any debris that washes into the tile will not run out with the stream of water into the sump where it is possible to be cleaned. The debris will eventually clog the tiles and they can be very tough to clean usually requiring the use of high pressure water jetting to get them cleaned, if it can be cleaned at all. This high pressure water jetting usually is fairly expensive and charged per hour.
Your best option is probably to either adjust the float switch to a longer cycle if it can be or, install a different switch that can be adjusted so that the pump turns on just before the tiles are reached and off just before the pump draws air when the pit empties for the maximum cycle length.
You mention noise as being a problem usually sump pumps are fairly quiet when operating with little more than a hum or the sound of water in the pipes. This leads me to wonder if the check valve banging when it closes might be the noise problem. If that is your noise objection I suggest looking at this article I wrote. Eliminate Check Valve Noise from your Sump or Sewage Ejector Pump
Redwood