Hey there, Michael Church, Crawl Space Ninja.
We got a great, great question from Anthony in Vernon Hills, Illinois.
He had recently purchased the Pump Sentry 822 Battery Backup for a Sump Pump, and he
was wanting to know some installation instructions on how to set up multiple batteries, so that
he could get a longer run time.
Stay tuned.
Okay Anthony.
First of all, I want to thank you for getting the Pump Sentry.
It is a great, great product.
What makes it such a unique product is that it can be set up on multiple batteries like
you're wanting to do.
But also it's a retrofit product for a sump pump that's already installed.
Most battery backups, you have to take out the old sump pump and then install a dual
sump pump system.
This one is designed to make your current sump pump run in the event that you lose power.
Now, the 822 is only good for a sump pump that runs at a maximum flow of about nine
amps.
About half horsepower or smaller in most cases, although it could maybe push a three-quarter
horsepower.
But they do make a bigger model, the 1622 for those.
Which we don't currently have online at our DIY store, but maybe check back later, when
we might be carrying those.
But the 822's been a great product for us.
And we've had a lot of people install it themselves.
So let's get into exactly what you would need, some of the items you would need to make a
parallel battery install on the 822.
This is obviously what the unit looks like.
Here is the positive and negative outputs for the batteries.
You're going to also need a deep cycle size 27 is what they recommend.
They do have some other batteries that they recommend.
We like the Optima battery.
This one can be purchased at Pep Boys, or even on Amazon.
Different places like that.
There is a core charge of about $18 most of the time, so it's about a $320 battery plus
tax, depending on where you're at.
Great, great battery.
You can take three of these, according to the people over at SCC.
You can take three of these and line them up in succession, so that it gives you a longer
run time.
One battery is typically good for 50 to 200 cycles, depending on how much water's coming
in; so you could triple that, basically.
Another thing you're going to need is extra cords, which we're going to make available
when you purchase the Pump Sentry.
You can add extra cords if you're going to add extra batteries, and I'll get into that.
Let's go to what it looks like right here.
This is basically the terminals that's going to run from the Pump Sentry to the batteries.
Now, the way this unit is installed is exactly the way you would want to install it.
It needs to be up and over the sump pump.
All that's in the install manual, and I'm going to cover a lot of that.
But if you go to our DIY store, and you scroll down, and you click on the Pump Sentry right
here, and you go down to the bottom.
This is where you can add those extra parallel cables if you need to.
But if you scroll down to the very bottom of the diagram, it shows a little video of
me.
But also, it shows right here the manufacturer brochure number one.
And when you click on that, it'll open up to this page here.
This is a quick diagram of how to install.
This is the normal installation, where you've got the one marine battery.
Never use a normal car battery; you always want to use a deep cycle 27 marine battery.
There's the Pump Sentry, and then there's your outlet.
The Pump Sentry plugs into the outlet, the black and red cords plug into the positive
and the negative on the battery, then the unit plugs in here.
As the unit loses power, or as your house loses power, it converts from AC to DC power,
and then back and forth.
The nice thing about this unit is it does a trickle charge, so it keeps the batteries
charged and all that.
But right here, in page two of this diagram, shows you exactly what you need to do to make
this run in parallel.
Let's say this is battery one, right here, that is connected directly to the Pump Sentry.
Then you would take battery cables and hook into battery two, negative to negative.
Then battery three, negative to negative.
Battery one to two, positive to positive, battery three, positive to positive.
Very easy install.
You also want to make sure these batteries are inside a battery case, which is also available
at your auto parts store or on Amazon.
Just a little plastic case that the battery will sit in in case there's ever any leaks
or anything like that from the battery.
You can see, very easy install.
But a couple of things I wanted to cover is make sure that you are always running in parallel
and not in series.
I just want to, for safety's sake, cover that, okay?
You always want positive to positive, red to red and to the Pump Sentry, black to black
on the battery.
So negative to negative.
For all of you electrical guys out there, I know this is super-simple stuff, and you're
probably looking at me like I'm crazy.
But there's a lot of people out there that don't understand and they would try to hook
it up negative to positive.
You never want to do a negative-to-positive in a parallel; that's called a series connection.
We want to stay in a parallel connection.
Anyway, great question out there, Anthony, appreciate you watching the YouTube channel
and doing the Ask a Ninja.
My name's Michael Church with Crawl Space Ninja.
Hope you make it a happy and blessed day.
We'll see you later.