The Joys of Homeownership

For the past several weeks, we have been battling our sump pump. The previous owner had installed a backup pump, (which we are so grateful for) that starts beeping loudly when the water level in the sump gets too high. Well, about 3 weeks ago, we heard the beeping for the first time, and discovered the rising water. Having never had experience working with a sump pump, I wasn't sure what to do. Jared called up Rick, the previous owner, and he graciously came over and looked over everything with us to try to find the problem. We discovered that both pumps were working fine, although the backup pump needed a new battery. So he thought that maybe the valve was bad. We replaced it, and turned on the pump, and it drained the sump, although a bit slower than I had anticipated. All seemed fine, till about 4 days later when the backup pump went off again. Feeling more confident knowing how it all worked, I disconnected the pump from the pipe and discovered that the pipe was blocked with sediment. I went to home depot and got a plumbers snake and tried to clear out the pipe. I was able to get in about 2 feet into the pipe, but couldn't make it go any farther. I hooked up the pump again, and it drained the sump faster that in had before, so I thought, maybe that was good enough. Not so. 3 days later the backup pump was going off again. I repeated the process with the snake and got a bit farther. I hooked up the pump, hoping to have it be good. 3 days later we were back. Well, I was tired of playing in the mud, so I decided to cut out a 2 foot section of the pipe to see what was going on in there. Sump pump pipes should not look like this.

 7 feet of pipe was clogged like this. 

Here I am cleaning out the upper portion of the pipe with the snake. 

All put back together. And now we can remove this section of pipe every year or so to keep it cleaned out.

Maybe I should clean the mud off the wall.

Side note: The previous owner had said that he'd had trouble with the sump pump before, and had a bit of flooding. I decided to peek under the carpet near where the sump is, and guess what was found. Yup...mold, and lots of it. We now need to rip out our basement floor. That will be fun, especially moving the pool table. Wish us luck!