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, Sun, 1 Jan 2012 05:35:12
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Hi
We have a wet basement / high water levels that rise from under house, VERY fast.
Unlike you we have only 1 sump hole but learned early on that we needed more than 1 pump, and to have the electric circuits for the pumps much higher than our builder put them, and a battery backup pump too. We also got a generator eventually since we lose power for extended periods and have a lot of water to deal with and need to keep our battery backup pump charged.
I don't know if you would benefit from or need pumps in the old furnace hole but I encourage you to keep spare pumps around. When floods hit around here, you can't easily find pumps at the hardware store or anywhere else.
If nothing else whether or not you put pumps in the furnace hole should perhaps be dictated by whether or not you end up seeing any quantity of water to pump in that hole.
We added flood alarms to our house too so we get an alert if the pumps all fail and the water rises out of the hole. Well worth it in our opinion if you have or are considering an alarm. Mind you, we don't just get damp floors, our basement fills up faster than our local fire department can pump us out.
Our alarm uses a combination of "water bugs" that are triggered if water reaches the basement floor and a home made float switch that triggers if the water rises to a certain height and makes the float rise.
If you have more than one pump already, I'd recommend you consider staggering their heights or float switches so that they get triggered or pump in stages. 1 pump for low water volume, with a second kicking in if the water comes in faster than pump #1 can pump it. We have so much water we now have 4 pumps in our hole and 4 spares. Yes, we are nuts and get that much flood water.
If the pumps share a waste pipe, make sure you install check valves to prevent them from pumping water back into basement through the other pump(s).
If your pumps are staggered height wise and you have only moderate water, you won't be running multiple pumps when not needed or need to worry about wasting electricity.
And a little wasted electricity is cheaper in my opinion than needing to replace your heating system or any other expensive mechanical equip. in the basement.
If you live in an area prone to freezing temps, make sure your drain pipes are pitched properly so you don't end up with standing water freezing the drain lines.
Last bit of advice: we recommend Zoeller brand pumps. We burned out a lot of other brands of pumps here and have never had any trouble with the Zoellers and they run for days and days when we take in water.
Hope this helps and that you don't need a crazy system like ours with all of the backup stuff we added over 20 years! Can you tell that we have been through a few too many floods here? ;)
posted by 75.25....
, Sun, 1 Jan 2012 05:35:12, Sun, 1 Jan 2012 09:59:40
, Sun, 1 Jan 2012 06:12:51
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