![]() There are amps, volts, and watts, and everything seems to provide specs in a different unit. In the shopping process I learned some science. 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. We needed a 1200W inverter, which I found at an auto parts store. One obvious drawback is that this only works when you are there. 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). My $100 solution was to buy a thing called a power inverter and a long extension cord. I was worried about this exact same thing: lots of rain plus the possibility of now power = wet basement. 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. 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. Still, it would have been nice to not have that cleanup effort, so we’re going to start getting plumbers out. 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. The power came on mid-way through moving stuff, and the water was sucked out in maybe 15 minutes. 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). Power went out at 11 Monday night, and by the morning we had about an inch and a half of water in the basement. Quick update: we were treated to a good, and not too devastating, example of why we need some kind of backup. Oooh: does yours come on automatically or do you have to open a stopcock of some sort? So yeah, it’s doable, just not as convenient. 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. 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. We’d be looking at a similar run, maybe longer than you describe. Oh, we definitely have water in the basement, it’s just not anywhere near where the sump pump lives. Totally worth the money for the peace of mind! Now I don’t have to worry about neglecting battery maintenence, or running out of battery when there’s a very long power outage. The plumber ran PVC along the ceiling and the wall and got the water over to the sump pit. 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. It has come on a couple times since I had it installed about 2 years ago. 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. 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!Īnd 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. The water-powered unit sounds intriguing. This requires monitoring and testing, as the time you need it most is the time it is probably shot and you forgot about it. 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.Īnd 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. A water-powered backup, even more so (there is no water supply anywhere near the sump). 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.
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