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Standby pump Posted by Ari [Email] (#2847) [Profile/Gallery] (more from Ari) on Mon, 16 Apr 2007 14:10:33 In Reply to: Re: sump pump, standby, yaofeng, Sun, 15 Apr 2007 21:42:04 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
Or, what is the possibility of a nor-easter, with heavy rain and high winds knocking out power? Pretty good, actually. Same with hurricanes - lots of rain and no power.
I live in a pretty wet area, and even if there isn't a lot of rain, the pump runs occasionally. So it's always getting used.
Also, as you've found, pumps die. Every once in a while my main sump pump jams up - silt, a small stone, whatever, jams up the impeller. Ask me how I know.
For a backup pump, I have a 12 volt marine bilge pump, running off a 12 volt deep cycle marine battery I picked up at Wal-Mart, with a float charger to keep it happy. I have a totally separate float switch and exit hose. The total setup cost me about $125 in parts, and I need to replace the battery every four or five years. And in the winter, I can use the battery, through an inverter, to drive my furnace (gas hot water, so I only need a little bit of power to run the circulating pump). I saw the water powered back-up pump on This Old House, but I haven't priced it up.
I guess that if you get water only once every few years, a back-up pump is probably more trouble than it is worth. But an infrequently-used device should be tested regularly, as we all know.
Before I had the battery back-up pump, I spent a miserable night carrying buckets of water up the basement stairs by candle light when a heavy rain and windstorm took out the power.
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