My sump pump has been crazy overactive since the ground unfroze this spring (spring technically begins in late March, but it almost snowed last weekend). Every 45 minutes, the sump pump is going off and spewing out approximately 5 gallons of water into the backyard through the exhaust tubing. Normally, this would make me feel secure, especially after a rainstorm. However, regardless of the weather, the sump pump has been going off, like clockwork every 45 minutes. That doesn’t make me feel secure.
Anyone have any experience they could share? Like before my basement floods?
Likely causes…
I don’t have a sump pump — my home is well above the water table several hundred feet below — but I did some research when thinking about buying a home near the water table before. And some extra research now.
A sump pump is just like most other pieces of equipment with a float valve and pump, from your gas tank to swamp cooler to canal pump. From your description, it doesn’t sound as if any part is failing. The nearby rivers are experiencing around the 10th highest crests in recorded history, largely as a result of mountain snowfall. Are you in or near the FEMA-designated flood plain? If you are required to carry flood insurance, you probably are.
If it weren’t for the levees and the diversion of Bassett Creek (you know, the river that runs underneath downtown Minneapolis), large parts of your city would be under water right now…
I’d still schedule maintenance. The backup battery should be replaced every few years, and the pump should be maintained twice a year at a minimum.
In Utah, we often use swamp coolers to cool our homes because the climate is usually so dry. Same stuff, different application, but the same rules — particularly twice-annual maintenance — apply.
I’d haul any expensive electronics out of the basement as a precaution, though. Or at least get them up off the floor.
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Matthew P. Barnson
Experienced something similar
We have never had that problem – our was the opposite. We would get enough vegetation sucked into the sump well and have it clog and stop. Luckily we were home whenever it happened so there was no flooding. That symptom though was our sump pump turning on, but because it was clogged with leaves and such couldn’t suck so it would not turn off.
Our neighbor had his that followed the same kind of cycle that you are referring to. Where does your pump eject out to? If it ejects too close to the house, the water could be making it’s way back into the drain system / pump well. The builder put his sump pump ejection too close to the stairs that led to his basement. when his sump would pump out enough water, it would make its way to his drain system and recirculate the whole process.