Looking for a bit of advice from the collective wisdom here - last night it was raining heavily by my house, and while I had no water intrusion (everything has been very good), I did notice my sump pump making a high pitched noise - I shot a short 40 second video and put it up on Youtube: - YouTube . It almost sounds like a cicada, but it was pretty constant during the rain (its stopped afterwards) and also seemed to stop whenever I touched the cover to the sump pump pit.
My question is: Is that a normal sump pump kind of noise, or if it might be indicative of a problem. If it is a problem, who would be the appropriate sort of person to call to check it out?
That’s not a normal noise.
It might be that you’ve got a bearing starting to fail in the pump motor. I’ve also heard of pumps making high pitched noises when they overheat. Sometimes they get so hot that they basically boil the water and it makes a high pitched noise like that. Overheating can be caused by a failing motor or can also be caused by things like a blocked discharge pipe.
When was the last time you had the pump serviced?
Around here a lot of the local plumbing outfits also handle sump pumps.
Thanks - thats kind of what I was thinking, too. I just bought the house a couple of months ago, so the service history is unknown. I will probably play it on the safe side and get someone to come out and service it.
OK, I’m more and more sure it is NOT the sump pump making that noise at all… I think I may literally have a cicada or other noisy insect stuck up in the drain that feeds into the sump pump - I’ve run the pump manually and it makes normal motor/pump noises, and it hasn’t rained in three days now so the pump hasn’t been running at all, unless there is some kind of two-stage action going on with the pump. That doesn’t seem likely, though I know next to nothing about sump pumps.
The noise in the linked video is off and on, mostly in the evenings and at night, and stops whenever I move the cover off the sump pump pit - or touch the pipes, even when all i do is shine a flashlight down into the drain pipe! It’s gotta be some kind of beastie down there. I’m going to pick up a mirror and some bug killer and see if I can get at it tonight (the angle on the drain is such that I can’t see into it at all, but if I get a mirror I could look in there and see stuff). I’d say it was a cricket, as I’ve had a couple crickets get into the sump pump pit, but it’s a constant sound, not periodic like a cricket chirp.
It’s just very odd.
No matter what the cause of the noise, my rule is to have the new sump pump on the shelf before the old one breaks. Sump pumps always fail in the middle of the night on a weekend.