ERD50
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
The home we moved into has a finished basement, so I'm rather paranoid about flooding and have taken a belt, suspenders and another belt approach to our sump pumps and pit.
BACKGROUND INFO, skip if you want....
The original set-up was pretty good, a 3/4 HP good quality pump and a WatchDog brand backup pump with backup battery. I also have a 12V/120V inverter that I can use in an emergency to power a pump or recharge the backup battery. Because the radon measured just over the limit, the sellers put in a mitigation system (vent fan pulling from under the concrete floor), and a sealed cover was put over the sump pit. OK.
Drainage is pretty good around the house, and the ground water level must be fairly low, as the pump doesn't run at all until we get some rain. That main pump is large, which is good if we got some really hard rain, but for the normal occasional trickle into the pump during normal rain, it runs a very short cycle, like 5 seconds, because it pumps so fast. The float is attached and isn't really adjustable.
To resolve this, I bought a small 1/6th HP pump, added that with the external float switch set lower than the main pump. That runs for ~ 30 seconds to drain the pit. I don't think the 3/4 HP pump has come on even once since I installed the smaller pump (other than me testing it), so that's saving wear/tear on the 3/4 pump. And since the 1/6th HP pump was pretty cheap, I bought a spare, for a quick swap out if needed.
It was difficult to remove and replace the sealed cover to do any routine maintenance/checks/inspection (required unscrewing a bunch of screws, and re-caulking a panel). And I would have to chop it up to make room for teeing in the added 1/6HP pump, there wouldn't be much left. [End of BACK-GROUND INFO]
To provide better access, I removed the plastic radon cover seal, and built a plywood and 2x2 box around the whole thing, ~ 2'x2'x2' with latches on the front side. A sealed plexi window ~ 6x10 so I can see inside w/o even removing the latch. Sealed up, but just unlatch the front and I have good access to everything.
The problem I'm having now after about a year is that I've noticed a bit of a musty smell in the sump closet recently. This is winter, so it's dry air. I opened the latch, and I there is some mold/mildew building up on the inside walls of this cover box. It's exposed 24/7 to the water in the pit. I think I'll just try washing it down with vinegar, maybe some bleach, and then painting the insides of the box with some anti-mildew paint?
I can't ventilate it, that defeats the purpose of having it sealed for radon. And I don't see any practical way of sealing the pit from the box in some other way.
Any other ideas?
TIA-ERD50
BACKGROUND INFO, skip if you want....
The original set-up was pretty good, a 3/4 HP good quality pump and a WatchDog brand backup pump with backup battery. I also have a 12V/120V inverter that I can use in an emergency to power a pump or recharge the backup battery. Because the radon measured just over the limit, the sellers put in a mitigation system (vent fan pulling from under the concrete floor), and a sealed cover was put over the sump pit. OK.
Drainage is pretty good around the house, and the ground water level must be fairly low, as the pump doesn't run at all until we get some rain. That main pump is large, which is good if we got some really hard rain, but for the normal occasional trickle into the pump during normal rain, it runs a very short cycle, like 5 seconds, because it pumps so fast. The float is attached and isn't really adjustable.
To resolve this, I bought a small 1/6th HP pump, added that with the external float switch set lower than the main pump. That runs for ~ 30 seconds to drain the pit. I don't think the 3/4 HP pump has come on even once since I installed the smaller pump (other than me testing it), so that's saving wear/tear on the 3/4 pump. And since the 1/6th HP pump was pretty cheap, I bought a spare, for a quick swap out if needed.
It was difficult to remove and replace the sealed cover to do any routine maintenance/checks/inspection (required unscrewing a bunch of screws, and re-caulking a panel). And I would have to chop it up to make room for teeing in the added 1/6HP pump, there wouldn't be much left. [End of BACK-GROUND INFO]
To provide better access, I removed the plastic radon cover seal, and built a plywood and 2x2 box around the whole thing, ~ 2'x2'x2' with latches on the front side. A sealed plexi window ~ 6x10 so I can see inside w/o even removing the latch. Sealed up, but just unlatch the front and I have good access to everything.
The problem I'm having now after about a year is that I've noticed a bit of a musty smell in the sump closet recently. This is winter, so it's dry air. I opened the latch, and I there is some mold/mildew building up on the inside walls of this cover box. It's exposed 24/7 to the water in the pit. I think I'll just try washing it down with vinegar, maybe some bleach, and then painting the insides of the box with some anti-mildew paint?
I can't ventilate it, that defeats the purpose of having it sealed for radon. And I don't see any practical way of sealing the pit from the box in some other way.
Any other ideas?
TIA-ERD50
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