Broken sump pump? Tripping the electrics.

just pumps said:

It should have been wired to it`s own trip circuit outside of the "well" from the start and I would be surprised if the pump was knackered unless it was the wrong pump for the application as they are good pumps. It operates via a float so have the wiring altered then you can test the float operation using a coathanger attached to a wooden pole to gently lift the float.

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Before we bought it i contacted some companies & gave them photographs of the crawl space environment and described in detail and was told that the pump used was ideal for the situation so i don't think it's a compatibility issue - unless they gave me duff info.

just pumps said:

Easier said than done now the brick well has been built.
Going back to the first post, did the op really mean the pump is in a bucket!? If so on no account let the installer back.

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Yes i meant it's in a bucket and why shouldn't i allow the installer back?

If you're thinking like a 10litre £1 bucket you pick up at B&Q that you use to wash your car with kind of thing then you've got the wrong idea. It came in its own 'bucket' / housing. I'll attach photos later.

bernardgreen said:

It isn't clear if there is a sump ( "well" ) or if the pump is standing on the "floor" of the crawl space. There is a sleeper wall mentioned.

Or did the installer sink a bucket inthe "floor" to create a sump ?

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They dug a section of the floor down deep enough to place the pump in its bucket/housing. This was at the front of the house as that's the direction of the water flow. This was then filled with limestone chippings to aid drainage (basically so that the sludge isn't getting pumped out but the water is).

Harry Bloomfield said:

Yes, it is an awful lot of water to kick in that often. As Bernard said, I also assumed the bucket was sunk into ground to form a sump to avoid dragging in rubble. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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I raised concerns about the frequency of it kicking in but was told that this is perfectly fine (as in it wont do the pump harm). The bucket shouldn't be taking in any stones/sludge. It should hopefully only be taking in water.



Ok hopefully that helps. Again if you need more info then just ask.

Sleeper wall & the crawl space floor...


The old pump in the hole that was dug out. This pump was just thrown in & looked like a Screwfix cheapy so it would've been sucking all kinds of crap. When the new pump was installed they dug out a bigger hole to sink the new pump in proper...


The new pump which is in its own 'bucket'/housing/whateveryouwanttocallit...

The alarm wasn't fitted as we'd never be able to turn the bloody thing off due to access problems.


The new pump installed in the sump / ground that has been dug out to house it. Filled with limestone chippings to stop all the crap being pulled out...

Lots of houses in our area have un-tanked cellars which suffer from the same problems as you & have the same solution. In order to provide a new circuit as your electrician suggests he will have to provide a small consumer unit with RCD & MCB protection. The RCD for safety & the MCB for the current carrying capacity of the circuit. Just because it has been OK for years does not alter anything, new circuits need to be installed in accordance with new regulations. Having said that, he really needs to establish whether the pump is faulty & just needs replacing, or it has overloaded it's current circuit & needs to be wired on it's own supply, before advising you. It seems to me he is giving sound advice but a little prematurely as the alternative to just replacing the pump will be more expensive.

Do the photo suggest you have actually got around to removing the pump?

If so, what happens if you plug it in now, in the dry? Don't run it more than a quick test dry and you will need to raise the float switch up, to have it run.

jj4091 said:

Lots of houses in our area have un-tanked cellars which suffer from the same problems as you & have the same solution. In order to provide a new circuit as your electrician suggests he will have to provide a small consumer unit with RCD & MCB protection. The RCD for safety & the MCB for the current carrying capacity of the circuit. Just because it has been OK for years does not alter anything, new circuits need to be installed in accordance with new regulations. Having said that, he really needs to establish whether the pump is faulty & just needs replacing, or it has overloaded it's current circuit & needs to be wired on it's own supply, before advising you. It seems to me he is giving sound advice but a little prematurely as the alternative to just replacing the pump will be more expensive.

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Ah you're from Cumbria. You're just up the road then really so you'll have been hit with the same ones we got hit with in recent years.

Our living room has been tanked using the Sovereign K11 system. Everything was sent back to brick & then the system used. The floor - both boards & joists were renewed as part of the job as well. This is because salts were coming through the original horsehair plaster (house built 1932) & the wallpaper was just peeling off. I'd been under the original flooring myself and some but not all of the joists were very soft at the ends where they were rested in to brick work. Other joists were still very solid. Some of the floorboards were also very soft at the ends. We'd been told of a fairly large chap further down the street who actually went through his floor.

So while the joists were like that i took the decision rightly or wrongly to just renew everything. There were IIRC 3 sockets in a room that size so i also decided to add more (now we have 5 or 6. Looking back i should've added more).

"The alternative to replacing the pump will be more expensive" - what's the alternative? Something to do with wiring i imagine? The pump alone costs about £300+ (i know i said £500 earlier but that's with new bucket etc).

You mention installing a new consumer unit with RCD & MCB protection. How would he do that? Basically what i'm getting at is whether or not he'll have to start ripping plaster off walls to start running cabling or to start drilling through walls etc.
The existing unit with those black switches that got tripped that i posted earlier ... the floor below that is solid. That's at the back of the diner. In fact the kitchen & diner are the only solid floor sections of the house. The hall & living room are timber floored.

Harry Bloomfield said:

Do the photo suggest you have actually got around to removing the pump?

If so, what happens if you plug it in now, in the dry? Don't run it more than a quick test dry and you will need to raise the float switch up, to have it run.

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Sorry those are old photos. The sleeper wall & old pump were taken before the work in the living room was carried out (so around 2013-2015) and the photos of the new pump that is installed was taken as the pump was being installed (Dec 2015) before carpeting went down.

It's worth testing the circuit with just the pump connected and nothing else, just to confirm that the pump is faulty. You could also connect it to another circuit (upstairs ring main) using an extension lead and if that trips, it's further confirmation that the wiring to the pump is faulty.
Else it's testing by an electrician on the pump itself... Motor windings etc.
Can't hurt to do a little further testing of your own.
If and when a new pump is installed, it might be worth getting one with a longer float switch cable and setting this to a longer length so that the water level has to rise further before activating the pump... This would make the pump operate less frequently and, if your footings and sleeper walls are correctly built (to cope with the ground conditions) it should do no harm to the construction.

" "The alternative to replacing the pump will be more expensive" - what's the alternative? Something to do with wiring i imagine? The pump alone costs about £300+ (i know i said £500 earlier but that's with new bucket etc).

You mention installing a new consumer unit with RCD & MCB protection. How would he do that? Basically what i'm getting at is whether or not he'll have to start ripping plaster off walls to start running cabling or to start drilling through walls etc.
The existing unit with those black switches that got tripped that i posted earlier ... the floor below that is solid. That's at the back of the diner. In fact the kitchen & diner are the only solid floor sections of the house. The hall & living room are timber floored. "


Read more: https://www.diynot.com/diy/threads/...ing-the-electrics.522922/page-2#ixzz5ntXCQmUj


Yes I meant exactly what you "imagine" & yes it will possibly mean "what you are getting at"

As has been mentioned earlier in the thread, he'll have to install to a standard. It's no good just replacing the pump if say there's been revisions in regulations since the last install than now say he has to do XYZ also.
So on that note can he 'just replace the pump' without running wiring through walls? Installing these abbreviated letters & putting it on its own circuit - would he be able to do that without ripping plaster off walls?

I contacted the company that makes the pump & they said that my pump should handle solids up to 1/2" in size so hopefully it should be that that's caused the issue.

Soggy Bottom said:

Installing these abbreviated letters

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Eh?
Also, are you posting to this thread under 2 different usernames? It's all getting very confusing!

Soggy Bottom said:

There's a stream/brook/culvert (have been given many names from different people telling us) that runs under the houses in the area.

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Maybe you should not have purchased afore mentioned dwelling!...Just sayin......why not fit bilge pump!

durhamplumber said:

Maybe you should not have purchased afore mentioned dwelling!...Just sayin......why not fit bilge pump!

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Would certainly operate at a lower level.

Soggy Bottom said:

natural' level is about 6 bricks high on a 9 brick high sleeper wall.

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Can you not fit a float switch that starts pump when water is few inches high?

durhamplumber said:

Can you not fit a float switch that starts pump when water is few inches high?

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If you look at the photos of the pump above, it is fitted with a float switch - its the red unit floating on the end of a cable, next to the pump.

It uses a ball bearing inside the float switch, which when the float rises - the ball shorts two contacts.

Harry Bloomfield said:

If you look at the photos of the pump above, it is fitted with a float switch - its the red unit floating on the end of a cable, next to the pump.

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That was the old since replaced pump, having seen the photos the"Bucket" is a housing with the pump inside I found the pump online and it is capable of 2500 gal per hour (might be US gals) with the float inside the housing. As I said earlier Zoeller are good pumps (don`t know anything about the company that puts them in their tanks though!) so would start with calling an electrican and routing any controls to an area you can easily access.

So ran the suggested test tonight - turned ALL electrics off downstairs so that the pump would be the only thing turned on - my wife said that for a split second you can hear the pump try to kick in (literally like a half second) before the electrics have then gone again.

So at least we know it's 100% the pump.

durhamplumber said:

Maybe you should not have purchased afore mentioned dwelling!

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And maybe i should've picked the right number on the EuroMillions.
Just a shame i didn't know them beforehand.

why not fit bilge pump!

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A what?
Ignoring for a second the fact i've never even heard of one of those, how do they differ to what i have in and in what way would they be better?
I'm cautious of that getting in to the realms of an earlier suggestion of relocating the pump.

durhamplumber said:

Can you not fit a float switch that starts pump when water is few inches high?

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It has a float switch https://www.sumpsandpumpsdirect.co....MMvk36UZJGqASl2PXayiutzF8DsZld-hoCmZEQAvD_BwE

Although the one that Harry is talking about was the one that i referred to as the old replaced pump so it no longer exists.

just pumps said:

routing any controls to an area you can easily access.

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Ah. I reply on a post-by-post basis so you got it with the old pump.

Just wondering what you mean exactly by routing controls?

The pump is either turned on or turned off as far as i'm aware & the on/off switch for this is above the floor boards. We never asked for this to be wired like this. The electrician (or at least one of his employees at the time) did it that way in case we ever wished to turn it off, but since the water isn't a seasonal problem but an every day problem we didn't really see the point & it's permanently left on.

As for the pump itself, it's in the sealed enclosure so there's no real controls.

Not challenging what you're saying, just trying to understand what you're saying.