My sump pump kicks on 180 times a day!


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Old 09-20-06, 07:58 AM
B
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Angry My sump pump kicks on 180 times a day!

Hey friends

This is freaking me out. I moved into my 8 year-old home 5 weeks ago and the water that goes into the sump basket is continuous 24/7...at the same flow regardless if we get a heavy rain or no rain for 5 days...so from what im told it may be a water table thing....my neighbor told me the discharge from the pump goes out of the house and under the ground to the storm drain in the street (about 65 feet away)

My neighbor told me he notices how much water was in the basements when the homes were being dug, so he paid for an additonal external drain put around the paremeter in which drains to a low spot in his front yard or maybe even one of the storm drains in the street and he has a bone dry finishsed basement and his pump never comes on...hes only 50 feet away from me....he had this done pre-construction tho

Tomorrow i have a builder warranty guy coming out to asses it for me (we have the 10 year builder limited warranty...its a Toll Brothers home). Who knows what htis guy will say, he may just say, you have a water table issues, we saw that when we dug and we put in a owrking sump pump to deal with it. It's noisy, i can hear it form any room in the house basically. I do know the water that gets discharged is getting to the sotrm drain casue i hear it go in there like 20 secodns after i hear it come on.

I bought a battery back up yo install but havent done it yet....but last saturday night i would have needed it...we lost power for 1:15 and my wife and i had to carry up 30-40 of water that was rising in the sump which would have certainly flooded the basement.

If i did my math correctly the sump has come on 525,700 times over 8 years (not counting leap years!) It comes on every 8 minutes!

Thanks for letting me vent...is there anything i should say or ask the warranty guy tomorrow when he's here?

Thanks
BAM
 
  #2  
Old 09-20-06, 05:06 PM
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Probably not covered under warranty. If you plan on staying there, you might look into having a perimeter drain put in for you. It would be a lot of digging and not a small expense. Look into getting a sump pump backup. Maybe one that uses water.
 
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Old 09-22-06, 08:41 AM
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Make sure all your gutters, discharge line, etc. are setup such that the water carries away from your foundation vs. draining towards it. There are many resources on the web to explain this further.

Also, make sure your sump pump is maintained to deal with that many cycles. If you sump is more than a few years old....replace it with a good quality cast iron sump (ex. Zoeller or Hydromatic). You also have to guard against your sump's float switch from burning out from so many cycles....so invest in a model which allows you to replace the switch every couple years without having to replace the sump motor.

Finally, have you check to make sure that you have a properly functioning checkvalve in your discharge line?
 
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Old 09-22-06, 12:15 PM
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You should check your float adjustment as well. You might be to adjust it so that it comes on less often but runs for a longer time when it is on. That would be preferable to rapid on off cycling.

Do you have any other neighbors you can aske about their sumps?
 
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Old 09-25-06, 04:54 AM
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Good advice from all three responders. Also consider putting a sump and pump outside. That would put the noise outside the house. (See my question in this same forum for a description of an outside sump.) This is something you can do yourself with a shovel and wheelbarrow if you have to.

I've had years when my pump clicked on once a minute for more than a month. Check valves certainly help keep the water from falling back into the sump, but they can fail too. One year my pumps were running but were not discharging water. The check valve had opened and closed so many times the previous year that it wore out, broke off, and plugged the discharge line. So when you change the pump switch, change your check valve as well. You can always have a new switch and check valve on hand.

I also have a battery-backup pump, and it has helped us out a couple of times--probably worth the cost and extra trouble of having it in the hole. One lady in the area has two sumps in her basement with pumps in each and a battery-backup pump in one.
 
 

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