Sump Pump Life Span

[KD0AXS]

If the water is running in from the drain tile and the pump is pumping it out, then everything is operating normally. It doesn't have to be raining for you to get water draining to the sump pump.

It's certainly not a bad idea to have a spare pump on hand just in case, but that spare pump does no good if you're not right there monitoring it to know it failed, or if the power goes out. What you really need is something with some redundancy built in.

We recently had to have our entire drainage system torn out and replaced because it wasn't installed properly and we had water coming in the basement. We had a "Triple Safe" sump pump system installed, which as the name suggests, has 3 pumps. The primary pump is a 1/3 HP Zoeller pump. The secondary pump is a 1/2 HP Zoeller pump. This takes over in the event the primary pump fails, or runs simultaneously if there's too much water volume for the primary pump to keep up. There's also a battery backup pump, which will pump over 10,000 gallons on a charge. The system also has a battery maintainer and an alarm that sounds if the water level gets within 6" of the top of the sump.

 

[GGorman04]

Wow that is a system!!!
Did you install it yourself?

 

[KD0AXS]

Originally Posted By: GGorman04
Wow that is a system!!!
Did you install it yourself?


No, we had it installed along with the replacement of our entire drain tile system. The original drain tile wasn't installed properly,so the water never even made it to the sump pump to get pumped out. It just leaked into the basement.

 

[opus1]

Originally Posted By: GGorman04
Its coming from the tiles. I will buy a spare pump just in case
Thanks for the replies

I know I'm kind of late, but it's possible that groundwater has shifted and that's why you're seeing more constant inflow now. When I moved into my current house, the pump only ran in the spring and halfway into the summer unless we got a heavy storm. The pit would dry out completely over the winter. About 5 years ago I noticed that the pit no longer dries out completely, even in winter, and my pump is activated all year round.