DIY

I will start by saying I’m not that kind of engineer and you shouldn’t take anything here as advice. It’s a comical re-telling of my mishaps and probably not even to building code.

• Part 1: Foundation drain sump pits/Iron ochre
• Part 2: A. Potato does Plumbing Part 2: Cleaning and Re-hosing a Sump Pump Blessed with Iron Ochre

Okay, so the new pump/hose situation was not working. The drinking water system backwash would flood the basement (slightly) mostly because the pump we fixed simply wasn't getting output anymore.

It was working when we initially installed it and we did test it outside just pumping from a bucket at it was outputting a good rate!

I went away for work for about a week and my partner had been dealing with this so I decided to just follow his lead and see what he wanted to try, but also get what I thought we needed (which was to go back to using some hard pipe and not have such a long, slack hose).

His suggestion was to rent drain cleaner. We went to the local big box store and it turns out that you can't really rent tools > 25' for 1.25" pipes. They had a hand-held tool to rent but it cost the same to rent for 24 hours as it would to buy one, so we just did that. We ended up buying a 25' drain auger that could be operated by hand or drill for about $35.

When we got home, we tried disconnected the piping and tried to get the tool into the 90 at the wall, which you will remember didn't look so bad...

Turns out the other side was a lot worse and really did explain why the pump just wasn't pumping:

A centrifugal pump can pump against a closed valve without blowing up the piping because the flow is dependent on the discharge pressure, or head. The pump will just keep moving less and less fluid as the discharge head increases. When you have a restriction in the pipe like this, you will notice the pump is running but the level is not dropping. There are other potential causes (the impeller is gone, for example) that will show the same symptoms, so it was good to see that restriction right away.

I took the elbow outside to wash off and use a screw driver to chip away at the build up. That stuff is solid! While I did that, my partner augured the line out of the house. Some gunk came back, but not really that much. It looks like the line isn't as bad as just that fitting.

I have a theory that the rapid change in direction is slowing down the flow so it's not scouring as well, but we decided to not try and mess with any of the piping today. When I install the new piping, I will get rid of the 90 degree elbow.

When re-instating the pumps we did find that we were air locked and the pump would not pump at all. We were able to fix that by opening the flex coupling a bit to let the pressure escape. We were going to prime it, but decided to just give it a go once the pressure released and it ended up working just fine then. With the check valve, we shouldn't have to do that again as the line will always be full. There is a little hole on the threading for the check valve, but I suspect that's plugged.

Right now, the pump is working much better so we'll take that as a win and a reminder of what we should check if the rate drops off again.

I will start by saying I'm not that kind of engineer and you shouldn't take anything here as advice. It's a comical re-telling of my mishaps and probably not even to building code.

We did this weeks ago but I'm so lazy so I'm only posting about it how.

We wanted a way to disconnect the pump from the discharge pipe in order to remove the pump from the pit. We decided to try figuring this out one pump at a time, and start with the pump that sucks worse. I wasn't able to disconnect the existing hose/fittings when I tried earlier, but it turns out it wasn't actually that impossible to do if you were not worried about breaking anything, lol.

General piping arrangement

This is the before:

This is the after:

This shows what not to do in terms of arranging your fittings:

In that image, you will notice there is no check valve. I didn't think I needed it because I thought this discharge point had an air gap before it joined to where my downspout drains. I was wrong about the discharge point, and ended up making a run to the hardware store late in the afternoon and didn't take photos because I was angry at myself.

Without the check valve it was running 90 seconds on, 90 seconds off. With the check valve it ran 90 seconds on, 4 mins off. A massive improvement. It would also prevent the ditch in front of my house from backfilling the basement. I still don't know where this pump discharges to, but in the fall when things die back I will go exploring.

I'll describe the correct(er?) arrangement below, from pump to wall:

1. Male NPT threaded check valve threads into pump, with a smooth fitting on the other side.
2. 1.5" to 1.5" flex coupling
3. 1.5" to 1.5" barbed coupling, with one end in the flex coupling and the other connected to the corrugated hose with the adjustable strap
4. 1.5" Flexible hose
5. 1.5" to 1.5" barbed coupling, with one end the hose (attached with strap) and the other end in the next flex coupling
6. 1.5" to 1.25" flex coupling to connect to the 90 degree 1.25" barbed fitting in the wall.

This is what the fitting at the wall looked like:

Not so bad right? THIS IS CALLED FORESHADOWING.

Now for the cleaning

Here is what the pump and pit looked like before:

It looks so much cleaner than last time to me, thanks to all the cleaning we did. You can kind of see how the float might be rubbing against the discharge pipe, which is what I was hoping the flexible hose would help prevent.

The next two photos show it better, when removed from the pit and in the bucket:

These photos show the material that built up on the check valve.

Here is the suction side of the pump:

We didn't crack her open because I didn't care that much. We placed the pump in the bucket with cleating agent and let her sit there. I later went in with a brush and cleaned the casing up a bit. I did not take after photos because I was filthy.

We also cleaned the risers, which were not bolted down in any way:

It ended up working well enough for a week or so, but then we started having problems again and it wasn't keeping up with the backwash.

I'm going to make a separate post with what we tried/learned today and I have some future plans as well, which are to return to the hard piped discharge from the pump. The pump ended up flopping around in the pit too much when starting and stopping and that's messing with the float. I am going to create the assembly (mix of abs and more flex hose) and then install it all at once, rather than re-using pieces from this set up, so that we have a "spare" ready to go if needed.

I'm mid-DIY on this one but putting it out there in case it's helpful for anyone.

I'm not specifically looking for advice, but if you have personal experience with iron ochre and are willing to share, I would welcome it.

I live in a swamp. I have basement foundation drains that we got replaced when we moved in a few years ago. We mostly wanted battery backups on the pumps, but we ended up getting a new drainage system too. This got us super acquainted with our drains.

There is a type of microbe living in the soil that consumes iron and leaves behind something called iron ochre. We use chemical treatment to help keep the drains running (cleating agent, keeps the iron soluble) but are at the point where the pumps need to be cleaned.

We have a water treatment system (iron/sulphur filter) that backwashes every few days. It is overwhelming the pumps and causes the sump pit alarm to go off (at 4:45 am).

Our pumps are not easy to disconnect from the discharge hose, so I took a first go at cleaning out the pit and making sure the material isn't building up at the pump inlet. There was also a lot of ground water that day, so I wouldn't want to have pulled the pumps in the first place. I am sharing the photos of what it looks like inside a sump pit to help demystify the system.

link to video of the rate of water into the pit 😬

This is a photo of the sump pit:

There are three pumps. On the left you see the first pump (above the green hose), to the right of that you see the second pump, and then the red thing is the ~~emergency pump~~ (edit: float for the emergency pump which you can't see from this angle) which is on a battery back up. On the far right you see the drain and build up of iron ochre, as well as the white hose which is the backwash drain.

The first pump get stuck running dry and I think it has to do with how it is positioned in the pit. The pumps turn on and off via a hardwired float. When the water level rises, the float well...floats and pump turns on. When the water level drops, the float will also move down and eventually reach the off position. When there are more than one pump in a pit, the floats are set at different positions so that a second pump can kick in when the first is unable to keep up.

The float must be getting stuck in the up position. It doesn't do that when the cover is open, but when it is closed it shifts a little bit. It is also not properly sealed, and shoots water out of the sleeve connection to the discharge hose you can see on the left. The strap is facing away ands can't be tightened without taking the pump out.

How I attempted to clean the pit and hopefully flush some of the buildup off the pump internals:

1. I forced the pumps to run as long as they could by holding up a float (with a plastic coat hanger, lol - don't put your hands in the pit!)
2. After unplugging the pumps, I used a shop vac to clean up the iron ochre buildup on the side of the pit (at the drain) and anything I could get on the bottom, below the pump stands. You can see the contents of the shop vac here
3. I put some cleating agent (Iron out) into the pit and left the pumps unplugged to allow the pit to fill with water, keeping as much retention time as possible with the chemical rich water. Once the pit got very full I then plugged in the pumps and let pumps discharge the water. I repeated a few times.
4. I flushed the pit using the green hose in the above image. It is connected to my water heater and is only accessible tap in the basement (I have taps for the washing machine but no other plumbing). I opened it to the put and let the pumps keep up.
5. After I was satisfied that the pit had been sufficiently flushed, I poured a little bit of bleach into the pit and repeated the process of soaking the pumps. Please never mix bleach with other household chemicals. Bleach is not compatible with the active ingredients in Iron out. The use of bleach in the first place was somewhat questionable. I was trying to kill any iron bacteria in the pit, but I likely didn't use enough to manage that. It's not something I will be doing again.

I think the clean out helped a bit - the pumps seemed to be running quite well, but I have no way to quantify it. Unfortunately, it didn't help enough, and we are still be awoken by the alarms. The next step is to get brave and pull the pumps.

One thing I want to add to this system is something to measure and record the amps draw on the pumps. This would let me know how often they are running and help track issues with their performance.

Once I figure out how to disconnect the pumps and am able to take them out of the pit to clean, I will be sure to take photos of the process to share.

I had a leak under my floating floor and now it is coming apart, how do I approach fixing this?