When it comes to your sump pump system, a little bit of prevention can be worth thousands.
So does it makes sense (and dollars) to replace your sump pump system every few years?
The function of your sum pump system is to remove water that my builds up around the foundation of your home during heavy water flow. If you have a toilet in your basement, you may have a sump pump system as part of your plumbing system to eject water out of your basement.
The way a sump pump operates is that it has a float attached to a switch. When the float rises with the level of the water, it tells the pump when it’s time to get to work according to the level of the water. Due to wear and tear the off & on switch might wear out.
Once the microswitch switch wears out, a couple of things might happen:
1) The worn-out switch can fail to tell your pump motor to turn on, which results in flooding in your home.
2) When the microswitch fails, it can fail in the open position causing your sump pump to run without shutting off, and as a result burning out the sump pump’s motor, which once again results in water overflowing.
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The problem with your sump pump is that you’ll never know when the microswitch is going to conk out until it’s too late and you have a flood on your hands in your home.
It’s therefore recommended that you replace your sump pump motor every 5 to 6 years even if it appears that your sump pump is running fine, because you never know when your switch is going to fail. And although it seems like an unnecessary expense, the cost of replacing your sump pump is small compared to the high cost of damage caused by home flooding.
The other thing to consider with your sump pump, is having some sort of backup system. When you have the highest water levels around the outside of your home during major periods of rainfall, these storms can cause a power failure. The combination of high water levels and a power failure can lead to flooding in your home.
Therefore it’s a good idea to install a backup power source for your sump pump. This can be a battery type backup system, or you might want to consider a hydraulic backup system which uses the water supply from your home to run a backup pump that can run for as long as the power is out, whereas a backup battery will run out of power eventually.
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