How To Keep Your Sump Pump Running During Power Outages
If you’re a homeowner in a relatively wet area, chances are that you are well acquainted with sump pumps. These devices are installed in basements to pump away any excess water that would otherwise flow directly into your basement. They’re very useful if your house is built in an area with a high water table, or when your neighbourhood is confronted with the occasional heavy rainfall or flash flood.
There is, however, an elusive problem associated with sump pumps that not every homeowner is aware of.
The moments during which you need your sump pump the most (this of course being during extreme weather events) are exactly the moments when you’re most likely to encounter power outages. And without any electricity, the best sump pump in the world wouldn’t be able to save your basement from flooding.
So the question naturally arises: how do you make sure your sump pump keeps running when things go pear-shaped?
Well, you luckily do have a couple of options. So let’s go over them.
1. Add a battery backup system
Let’s start this list of options off with my personal favourite method: adding a battery backup system for your sump pump.
What a battery backup does for your sump pump is, in its simplest form, to automatically switch the sump pump over to a secondary power source when the electrical circuit of your house runs dry. This battery is usually of the marine AGM type, that has been drip charged while the power was still on. Once the power is back on, the system automatically switches back to the circuit to power your sump pump, and the battery returns to charging mode.
It is possible to add a battery backup system to your existing sump pump – you don’t need to buy a new unit for it. When deciding on a battery backup system, it’s important, however, to take into account how much running Ampère your sump pump requires. Here’s a really useful and extensive list of sump pumps and the Ampère they require to run.
2. Generator
Using a generator as a backup power supply for your sump pump is very similar to a battery backup system, but it works differently. Instead of using a charged battery, the generator converts a power source such as fuel to electric power.
Generators are less commonly used as a backup power supply for sump pumps, because they require more maintenance than the ‘set it and forget it’ battery backups. They can, however, run for a longer period at a time than battery backups; namely, as long as there is fuel.
3. Water powered sump pump
An interesting alternative way to keep your sump pump running during power outages, are water powered sump pumps.
These things utilise the pressure available in your houses water pipes to pump excess water out of your sump pump pit. To be more precise, they make use of the Venturi effect, reducing the pressure against the outflow of water from your pit and creating a suction. A very nifty solution indeed!
While they’re great in the sense that it’ll function without any electrical power, this method too has its disadvantages. For one, water powered sump pumps use a lot of water and are thus not very ecological. Secondly, you’ll not be able to use the water in your house while the sump pump is running on the water power backup.
4. Secondary sump pump
Last on this list is another common way to backup your sump pump: installing a secondary pump. While this method does not help your system when there’s a power outage, it does help in another scenario that can be a harbinger of disaster.
When your primary sump pump fails mechanically, it doesn’t matter if it has lavish access to electricity or not. It simply won’t work.
Secondary sump pumps kick in once they detect that the primary sump pump has stopped working, or can’t handle the load. The way this works, is that the float switch of the secondary sump pump triggers at a higher vertical point inside the sump pit than the float switch of the primary pump. So when the water reaches a level that it never should reach if your primary sump pump works as desired, the secondary pump helps out and starts pumping water out too.
Conclusion
As we’ve seen, there are many ways to prepare your sump pump for power outage events. In an ideal world, you’re likely going to have a combination between two of these methods. A battery backup is the preferred method of most homeowners, just because of its reliability and low maintenance. But any homeowner with a battery backup may be well advised to also make sure the sump pump is backed up against mechanical failure and this is achieved by installing a secondary sump pump above the primary one.
