So we’re looking at a “spot of rain” around here starting Sunday.
And we have a sump pump - AC/powered of course.
So if the power goes out, it could be a bit messy.
We could lay out 300ish dollars for a battery-powered sump backup system, or we could just plug the sump into a UPS (which we already have - could swipe it from the computer - or we could purchase a spare).
Anyone ever done this with a sump pump? Given how rarely we need such a combination I’m not in a huge rush to lay out the cash; we’ve only ever once lost power when there was significant rain (the other two times, there was no rain).
My neighbor has a UPS for his sump pump. He doesn’t want a drop of water on the floor. We have to keep everything off the ground in the basement. Since sump pumps always fail in the middle of the night on holiday weekends while you are out of town, it seems likely that the UPS would follow suit.
You need to compare the length of time the sump pump should run with the rated capacity of the UPS. A typical UPS will keep a typical computer going for only a few minutes. Will that be enough for your purposes?
But the rated capacity is only good for a new unit. As it ages, the capacity is reduced. This needs to be taken in to consideration.
Thanks - I suspect the UPS isn’t an ideal solution for sure.
And I’ve been looking into battery-backup pumps and those look like something we wouldn’t have the time / skills to install so we’d need to get a professional in. A water-powered backup, even more so (there is no water supply anywhere near the sump).
So I think I’ll look into the battery backup system soon, and hope we don’t lose power for long this weekend.
Motors draw quite a bit more current when starting than what they draw when running. Any UPS system would have to be sized to account for this. Since you are going to be on site a emergency generator would be a better solution. That’s pricey though. At least keep enough buckets around in case you need to remove the water by hand.
I have no experience with sump pumps of any kind, but it occurs to me that the best design of a battery-backed unit would be one with separate battery and pump modules, as the pump may last for decades, but the battery certainly won’t, so make sure it can be tested and replaced by the user.
And I’m pretty sure a pump’s backup battery would have the same faults as a UPS-type unit, that is, its capacity will diminish over time. This requires monitoring and testing, as the time you need it most is the time it is probably shot and you forgot about it.
The water-powered unit sounds intriguing. I assume your water supply is city, independent of electric power? I only ask because such a device wouldn’t work at my house – if my power goes off, my well pump stops working, too!
And in spite of the good advice in this thread, a UPS would work fine if it is properly sized, but that might be too expensive. We have a UPS that can power our TV broadcast cable station for at least 4 hours, but it is the size of a washing machine and I don’t even want to think what it cost.
The battery-backup sump pumps I’ve looked at online do indeed have a separate battery - in fact you have to purchase that separately. The batteries are generally lead-acid and seem to be the size of a car battery, and have to have their fluid levels checked / topped off at least once a year.
Of interest, one review notes that they produce hydrogen gas which may be an issue if you have a pilot light nearby (we do). One of the more expensive pump models suggested it could use a an absorbed-glass-mat battery which doesn’t have that risk.
Yes, our water is county-provided so generally works even if the power is out. If there’s something really major going on, the county supply might be impaired - during Irene (?) in 2003 or so, one of the county pumping stations lost power and water was not running for a few hours.
if you are on city water then price out the water powered backup option and installation.
when looking at battery backup figure the run time into your decision. if you had a couple day heavy rain and a day or two power outage then how long would your pump run and how long will the battery let it run. if you are in an area where the pump runs every 20 minutes during a moderate rain then this might not be the best option.
heavy multiday rains happen and day long power outages happen. when they happen at the same time with poor draining soil then you’re in bad shape. things like that can happen in springtime where you have a heavy wet snow that takes down power lines and the weather changes to rain or rapid snow melt.
I love my water powered backup. It has come on a couple times since I had it installed about 2 years ago.
Surely you have water in your basement, somewhere? My water tank is in the middle of the basement and the sump pump is in the corner. The plumber ran PVC along the ceiling and the wall and got the water over to the sump pit.
Now I don’t have to worry about neglecting battery maintenence, or running out of battery when there’s a very long power outage.
Oh, we definitely have water in the basement, it’s just not anywhere near where the sump pump lives. We’d be looking at a similar run, maybe longer than you describe. The sump is in a large unfinished storage area; the water comes into the furnace room kind of smack in the middle of the house - a separate room. Not sure what the framing-in is like between the two - it’s not “finished”, really, but it’s not just 2x4 and open space either.
So yeah, it’s doable, just not as convenient.
Oooh: does yours come on automatically or do you have to open a stopcock of some sort?
The water powered sump-backups usually have a valve with a float and arm that is positioned higher than the switch on your primary pump. If the primary sump pump does not engage due to power outage or mechanical failure, the rising water in the sump pit will raise the float on backup until it opens the valve, which will allow water from your pressurized water supply to flow through and create a siphon to draw the rest of the water out of the pit. This is one such product that I’m familiar with. (Warning: PDF file)
Quick update: we were treated to a good, and not too devastating, example of why we need some kind of backup. Power went out at 11 Monday night, and by the morning we had about an inch and a half of water in the basement. Some things on the floor that had to be tossed, though little we cared about except for one box of photos (which we opened then laid out to dry). The power came on mid-way through moving stuff, and the water was sucked out in maybe 15 minutes. We did a fair bit of mopping / Shop-vac cleanup (the mops were to push the water to the shop-vac) to get what didn’t get pumped out, and as of last night the floor was almost completely dry.
Still, it would have been nice to not have that cleanup effort, so we’re going to start getting plumbers out. It really sounds like the water-powered one is the better choice if it’s not too insane to run piping over to the thing.
I stumbled across an earlier thread on this topic, that mentioned a “deduct meter” which I gather gives you some credit for water that’s going storm drains vs. the sewers. That might offset some of the price.
One problem with a UPS that hasn’t been mentioned is that many of the cheaper models output a stepped square-wave waveform instead of a true sine wave, which doesn’t play well with motors and inductive loads; computers don’t really care because they rectify the waveform so only the peak voltage matters (some newer PSUs with power factor correction don’t like them, although there isn’t any reason why it wouldn’t work unless the PFC controller can’t follow the rapid transitions). There is also an issue with inrush surge during start-up, plus how long can the UPS run by itself, even if the sump pump doesn’t turn on that much, since it will be drawing some power for itself even without a load (which might be significant since efficiency and no-load power isn’t so important for a few minutes of runtime).
For the duration, yeah - a UPS might have “enough” power but as others have mentioned, sounds like it might not have enough juice for the motor startup, or might not have the right flavor, or something. Anyway, it generally seems like it’s not the ideal solution. I’m going to investigate water-powered or battery backup solutions fairly soon.
Wow, your timing is great. I was worried about this exact same thing: lots of rain plus the possibility of now power = wet basement.
My $100 solution was to buy a thing called a power inverter and a long extension cord. I tested this setup by connecting the power inverter to my car battery, running the extension cord from the inverter, down the stairs, and to my sump pump, and then pouring in a bucket of water to get it to turn on (our sump pump has no test button I could see, or any other button, switch, or control for that matter).
It totally worked! I was so relieved. One obvious drawback is that this only works when you are there. We needed a 1200W inverter, which I found at an auto parts store. At Lowe’s they had a 500W one, but it would just shut off as soon as I tried it due to the power overload.
In the shopping process I learned some science. There are amps, volts, and watts, and everything seems to provide specs in a different unit. I had no idea what model sump pump we had, but the company’s website listed amps and volts for all their models. Apparently amps * volts = watts, and I calculated that no matter what model we had, we would need an inverter capable of producing 1100-something watts of power.
So long story short, it’s not as fail-proof as a battery backup, but even though I didn’t need it this time, for me the $100 price is worth the peace of mind I have knowing we’re not totally helpless if the power goes. You can order them for less than this on Amazon.
True, V * A = Watts, but there is also a measurement called Volt-Amps. The difference is Watts works pretty well for DC or resistive-only loads on AC (light bulbs, heaters), but Volt-Amps is a better unit for reactive loads (motors).
And average power ratings work better for lamps; motors have brief surges when starting that will blow circuits if not allowed for.