Hi I'm Dave Bogot owner of the sump pump company and welcome to sump pump
101
we think it's very important that you know as much as you can about sump pumps
and how they operate
i get a lot of questions from people who were confused between their main sump pump
their back-up
and how they operate
so I'm going to explain that
and i'm also gonna tell you what your sump basin is is and how the water gets
in there in the first place
first off let's talk about your drain tiles
drain tiles are pipes buried in the ground
next to the bottom of the foundation these pipes have holes punched in them
in the idea is that as ground water rises up in the ground it collects
within the drain tile which can be either outside or inside of the
foundation
the idea is the waters collected in the drain tile before it can seep out
through the crack between the wall on the floor
the drain tile routes around the outside of the foundation where the inside of
the foundation
and ends up in the sump basin
and that's where your sump pumps live
and they're designed to pump that water away to prevents water from seeping
in and flooding your basement.
now let's talk about your main or primary sump pump.
this is the public plugs into the electrical outlet and does the vast
majority of the work
the way your sump pump works as it sits in the bottom of the basin and when the
water level rises high enough a swhich triggers it to turn on in this case I've shown
the most common float switch so that float lifts up when the water gets high
enough to trigger the switch
the pump runs and pumps the water up the discharge pipe
and usually outside on the ground
as you'll notice, in the discharge pipe we have what's called a check valve. A check
valve only allows water to flow in one direction, in this case out.
it's purpose is to make sure when the pump shuts off
a whole bunch of water doesn't run
back into the basin
second type of pump system is called a battery back-up
let me show you
first of all
the second pump
sits right next to that first pump
it has its own discharge pipe
comes out of the basin
and usually connects to that existing pipe
it has its own check valve
It has its own float switch
and the cord comes from this pump and runs out, to a controller
connected to aa bettery
and that's how the backup pump system operates
again the reason that it is so important that you have the battery backup sump
pump is it's not a matter of if
when your primary pump is gonna fail
let me just tell you a couple of common reasons for primary failure
first of all
one of the most common
switch
can fail
if the switch doesn't turn the pump on the pump doesn't work you're gonna
flood
secondly
the pump can get jammed
or clog
and at the pump is activated but has a piece of debris stuck and can't run
again you're going to flood
another common problems
the pump gets old
and simply dies every mechanical device ultimately is to going to fail and your sump
pump is no exception
and lastly
what happens if you don't have
electrical power
your primary pump runs off of the electricity in if you have a power
failure it won't run
unfortunately one of the most common signs that we experience power failures
is during a storm and that's when it's raining in the most water is going
to be coming in that basement
so again that's why it is so extremely important that you have a battery backup
pump system
if you don't have a backup pump system it's like not having a pump at all
so that's sump pump 101
we talked about your drain tiles ans your pump system and how the water gets in there gets
in there
we talked about the difference between the primary pump and the battery backup
system
we showed you how they work
and talked about important
reasons why they fail
and how important it is to have a backup pump
system