Backyard Sump Pump 101 [ Everything You Need To Know ]

[Music] all right so we're going to give you guys a demonstration we're going to go ahead we're going to pump we're going to pump down this indoor system and our outdoor system [Music] you can see that you can see the half horse you can see the half horse pump really throws water all right so we have an indoor sump basin this is pretty common you guys see it in a lot of the videos you see a lot of guys trying to use them outdoors i don't really recommend that you know i'm going to show you why we're going to give you a good demonstration why you know we're going to do a series on you know sump pumps we're going to do a series on the outdoor sump pump in particular since that's kind of what we represent all right so if you want to learn about sump pumps and you want to know what is the right sump pump for your job and if you're a contractor and you're trying to further your knowledge so that you can better yourself as a contractor pay attention don't skip around don't try to jump around watch this video i'm gonna go through it i'm gonna explain to you how to read the gpm on a pump and all the pump manufacturers have a chart showing you the head the head is the height that you pump the water okay that's what it's referred to as head and sump pumps drop off and the higher they're pumping up the water the more they're going to drop off so i'm going to go to a chart i want to go through these charts with you let's take a look let's take a look at this model m53 zoller sump pump it's probably the most popular sump pump for basements and crawl spaces it's a one-third horsepower sump pump and it does the job for indoor use without any problems it's actually the pump of choice for our little micro bad seed that we ship in a box but take a look at this i want you to look at this it flows up to 43 gallons per minute that gpm stands for gallons per minute so that's its that is the highest right there that is its highest under optimal conditions flow rate is 43 gallons now it goes on to say in the spec sheets you know up to 19 feet so i'm we're gonna look at the chart that zoller sump pump company gives us so that we can take a look at as we pump higher where we end up as far as with our gpm gallons per minute so here's a really nice chart that the seller sump pump company gives us pump performance curve we see at five feet high if you look at the five foot around the five foot line we're at that optimal 43 gallons per minute so this is what they called the total dynamic head as they pump the water higher with the sump pump you lose gallons per minute the gpm now we'll bump it up from five feet ahead to 10 feet ahead take a look we lose 10 gallons per minute we go from 43 gallons per minute that gpm to about 33 gallons per minute and just a 5 foot difference in head now let's take a look at 15 feet look at 15 feet go across to that curve we dropped 20 gallons per minute at 15 feet so for outdoor use when you use a one-third horsepower i recommend not discharging any further than 50 feet and if you're trying to pump water uphill you might want to rethink this and go to the half horse sump pump outdoors now when you go to the max that the pump is rated for which is 19 feet you can see you just fall right off like to two gallons per minute it looks like you know if you stare at this chart up here near this 20 feet of dynamic head total dynamic head at 20 feet it looks to be about two gallons so we're going to take a look at the m98 half horse and compared to this m53 this m53 with its max flow rate of 43 gallons per minute but as you can see as you increase the head it just falls right off it's fine for indoor use it's the weapon of choice but let's consider outdoor where we're pumping water far and we're pumping water uphill big difference so let's take a look you know again that's 43 gallons max flow rate at five feet and you can just see how it just falls right off as you go to 10 and then 15 and especially when you get to the max you know that is rated at 19 i mean you're just single digits you're pumping single digit gallons per minute so it's a big difference a really big difference you have to really pay attention you know to these pump performance curves gallons here in the us you know we're we're looking at the gallons per minute the gpm all right so now that we know how to read these let's go on to the m98 zoller sump pump and take a look at that and i'm also going to give you guys a performance test we're going to put the m53 zoller sump pump next to the m98 salar sump pump in an outdoor application all right let's go to the m98 all right let's take a look at this graph showing the dynamic head for the m98 horse zoller sump pump so you're gonna notice right off the bat this looks fantastic i mean 73 gallons at five feet ahead that's awesome so we're 30 gallons more than the one-third horse we're able to at five feet ahead pump 73 gallons per minute gpm that is fantastic we're the m-53 one-third horse its max flow rate was 43. so again when we go to 10 feet we're seeing about the same pattern we're going to lose about 10 gallons per minute when we go up to 10 feet high we're going to drop from 73 gallons per minute to 63. it looks like then let's go to 15 feet see where that puts us and i'm pretty happy with what i'm saying here because the one-third horse that would be at 15 feet 20 gallons per minute i'm seeing a gpm of 45 gallons per minute here that's pretty fantastic for 15 feet ahead you know you're pumping water uphill you got say a hundred foot discharge line out to the street i mean this pump's going to perform really really well when you're trying to push water a long ways or uphill and also it has a higher max as far as for dynamic head what it can actually pump instead of 19 feet it looks like it's more like 23 feet and yeah you do finally when you see this curve gallons per minute you know the gallons just drop right off these pumps when they get near that max i mean zeller pump companies telling you yeah it'll keep pumping and keep pumping and keep pumping and it's showing you the single digits i mean we're in single digits here where you see that green line and that circle right there that's single digits so the half horse pump is definitely the weapon of choice for most outdoor applications and the m98 is a really really good sump pump you know we use the m98 in most of our models so let's get to a demonstration now let's show you these two perform side by side so what we're going to do is we're going to fill this indoor sump basin with water we already have the sump pump inside the basin we've been getting rained on through this whole thing too as well all right so so we got a lot of head we put a lot of head on ours we're over 20 feet tall on ours and i'll explain why we'll get to that so i'm gonna i'm gonna let this run down now i always teach you guys the more head and that's the lift the more head the less water per minute it's gonna pump okay so we got a a half horse here we got a one-third horse here can you see the stream difference same head actually the half-horse is higher the half horse is a few feet higher and look at the look at the flow because of the lift i mean the half horse is going to pump more anyways but it's not going to be taxed under that much head it's not gonna be taxed under the lift as much as the one-third horse so it's taking forever to pump out this this little uh all right so imagine this you're pumping a hundred feet maybe even more but let's just say 100 feet for round numbers and you have an incline say the incline's only a few feet to get some water up and out of a backyard usually that's a minimum of three feet from the bottom of the sump pit what's going to happen when you're pushing 100 feet and you've got water in a discharge line that you are pushing a hundred feet you're going to slow that pump right down the gallons per minute are going to drop right off so this series is going to teach you so much about sump pump systems and because we are the outdoor sump pump guys we're definitely going to spend a lot of time teaching you what are the do's and don'ts to an outdoor sump pump system all right so we're pumping all the water we're pumping all the water out of the traditional basin [Music] [Laughter] oh my god oh my god demonstration gone wrong man good stuff good stuff oh jeez welcome to the french draymond channel i'm your host robert sherwood we're in part two on our series outdoor sump pumps the basics part two all right so this is an indoor sump pit which we do not recommend and we have a failed check valve and what's happening with this failed check valve when the pump shuts off the water that's inside the line runs back into this pit the water then rises as it's returning back into the pit from the discharge line and that keeps turning the pump back on i thought this would be a really really good demonstration to take this feld check valve that we came across out in the field when we replaced a burned up sump pump in a small indoor unit that was used outdoors that should never have been we don't recommend using an indoor sump system the guys that do sell these look at this this failed check valve is letting all the water come back in this pump keeps running so you have this very limited very small sump pit for the outdoors when the check valve fails it's going to turn the pump right back on the water is going to run out of the discharge line so there's a hundred feet of discharge line on this and this is a demonstration we have a failed check valve from a job that we took out an indoor sump basin which we do not recommend always use an outdoor sump basin but we took a failed check valve that burnt up a pump and we went ahead and we replaced it with one of our outdoor systems so this right here is why we don't use a check valve so in this part two outdoor sump pump systems i wanted to cover a couple of things one you never want to use an indoor basin indoor basin is very small very limited see how the water is coming back from that discharge line pump has to run pump it out again it pumps it back into this discharge line this discharge line in this demonstration it's a mock-up of us pumping water out of the backyard and pumping it out into the front yard it's a hundred feet of discharge line when it shuts off the water in the discharge line runs right back in because of the failed check valve now we don't use check valves that's what i want to get across right now outdoor sump pump systems anywhere in the world you do not want to put a check valve in it if you have a discharge line running any you know kind of length if you need to get the water out of somewhere and you have a discharge line that's 75 feet 100 feet you know 150 feet whatever it may be if the check valve goes bad and you're using an indoor basin like you see here once the pump turns off all that water comes out of the discharge line runs back down into the sump pump basin until the float on the sump pump itself turns back on this keeps repeating over and over and over again now remember an outdoor sump pump system it's not like having this happen in your basement or your crawl space where you can hear it running you hear the sump pump running continuously and you start to recognize wow that that's that's running a lot it was running a lot yesterday heck i think it was running a lot the day before and you go in your basement and you go under your crawl space you take a look and you find out that you have something wrong with your check valve because the water just runs back and the pump keeps turning on outdoors you're never going to figure that out because you're not going to be in your yard standing next to your outdoor sump pump system to recognize that this hundred foot discharge that's pumping the water if you built it with a check valve the check valve once it fails it takes out the sump pump that's how that works we don't build with a check valve for that very reason it's a liability you get rid of that when it comes to building outdoors if you want to use a check valve indoors of course go ahead and use one indoors i have one in my house on my basement system why not you know you're only lifting the water up out of the basement it's not a big deal i've had a check valve go bad in my home the sump pump does turn on sooner because you have the water in the drain tiles filling up and then you have the water coming back that was in the standpipe to lift the water up out of the basement but when you're in a outdoor application and you're pumping water at greater distance than just 10 feet you're gonna have all that water come right back into your outdoor sump pump basin when your check valve fails if you're using like this small indoor you know sump pump pit this is not meant for the outdoors it never was you know guys handymen they went ahead and adapted this and it's it's really a joke it's it's very flimsy doesn't hold up to say lawn mowers driving over it anything like that it can't take it you know it's meant to have cement poured around it these go in a basement or crawl space and they have cement poured around them it does give them more strength when you do that so look at this sump pump just keeps pumping the water out and this failed check valve that we took out of a job when we had to replace an indoor system that was like this you you see exactly what's going on you have a very small sump pump pit you got a check valve that you're relying on because there's just absolutely no room here for any kind of failure a check valve is a wear item when they wear out and they quit the water just runs back from your discharge line and fills the sump pit again so there's a few different things that we do to build what we think are the best outdoor sump pump systems for residential use commercial use diy here we go we just pump all the water out again we have a failed check valve all right so let's just put this pump and this discharge line in ours so we can see the difference all right so now we have the exact same pump 100 feet of discharge line the exact same discharge line and the exact same failed check valve now i had to speed this up so this is times two real speed the reason why i had to speed it up this is not that little tiny unit that belongs in a basement or a crawl space this is a real outdoor sump pump system this has a horizontal chamber it holds a ridiculous amount of water the reason why it holds a ridiculous amount of water is we don't want our sump pump short cycling the purpose of this demonstration we showed you that cheap indoor sump basin versus an outdoor sump system that's chambered so the pump is pumping probably about 55 gallons per minute right now again this is you know times two real speed just because i didn't want to bore you guys to tears if you made it this far that congratulations you're learning something so we have instead of just a vertical sump we have a vertical sump with this big horizontal chamber it holds a lot of water which means when the pump turns off and the water runs back from this you know discharge line because we never use a check valve ever don't have to we use an outdoor sump system that has a chambered system that way the water can come back out of the discharge line it doesn't raise the float much at all because you have this big horizontal chamber we're displacing such okay right now the pump is pumped down and you're gonna see the water come back in from the discharge line and it's not going to really be much it's not going to amount to much it's not going to turn this sump pump back on like it did in that smaller basin so there's many reasons why we like the horizontal chamber many reasons one just displaces more area more water you're gonna you know be able to build without a check valve you never have to worry about that failure of a check valve you get rid of one of the largest components that cause sump pumps to run repeatedly and burn up you just get rid of that altogether you know less is more in so many cases and this is the perfect example so the water has all ran back from that line filled just the bottom of this horizontal chamber it's not very much and that's it now this horizontal chamber does a lot of things it gives you some on site storage in the event that you have a power outage it gives you the luxury of building without a check valve and look we're pumping the water uphill 100 feet and all that water came back and there's this laying in the bottom of that chambered sump pump system and it's not turning the pump back on so really important and then the other plus is if you're in the north where you freeze you don't want to use a check valve because it's going to hold water in the line when it is working and you're going to freeze up so our systems don't freeze up because we don't build them with a check valve welcome to the french drain man channel i'm your host robert sherwood we want to talk about sump pump lines we're going to give you guys the 101 of outdoor sump pump systems and the discharge line on how to deal with it on the push you want to use inch and a half on the push now i'm going to show you why and i'm going to tell you why so we have 200 feet of inch and a half on a half horsepower zoller m98 outdoor sump pump system when we finally get to the peak the top of the hill we go to our bushing that takes you from the inch and a half discharge to your 4-inch corrugated pipe we're at the peak so now on the discharge end we're going downhill do not take your line to a three inch or four inch until you're going downhill once it becomes a gravity-powered system you go to the bigger pipe whether it's three or four inch it doesn't matter in this case we used our high octane solid super strong you know discharge pipe sump pump is still probably rocking 45 i'd say about 45 gallons per minute that's pretty good on 200 feet of discharge line why are we still moving 45 gallons per minute because we only had an inch and a half discharge all the way up until the peak now if we would have went to a four inch line and tried to push water uphill you would just kill your sump pump system if you're pushing water uphill in a four inch line you're gonna have more mass more weight more resistance in a bigger pipe that's why an inch and a half discharge on an inch and a half pump you take it all the way out to the front yard until you finally get to where you're over the peak if you will if you're flat well you're still pushing water keep it an inch and a half line if you can get it to where it's going downhill and it's gravity powered take it to a four inch line like we did there but this is 200 feet and that sump pump is still moving a lot of water because it's only an inch and a half line and we didn't try to put it in a bigger line so that is one of the biggest things you have to be aware of you'd kill your gallons per minute your pump would only be pumping out maybe five gallons per minute if you were doing a three inch discharge all the way or if you went to a four inch well now i've seen it to where it's just like a couple of gallons per minute so now i'm going to show you a trick i'm going to show you how to keep your sump pump at 70 gallons per minute so if you have a fence on a property line what we do is we put a discharge line up on a fence i'll keep 70 gallons per minute because now it's gravity-powered system we're only pumping it up on the fence and then we just have it angled out to the front yard obviously that was an exaggerated you know demonstration that we showed you so that you understood what it is we do and i know people say that's gonna look bad on the fence but you know what i never never ever sacrifice performance over vanity it's not what i do alright guys until the next video welcome to the french draymond channel i'm your host robert sherwood i just wanted everybody to know if you're going to purchase one of our outdoor sump pump systems if you're going to do a diy project or if you're a contractor who's just trying to learn as much about this as he possibly can value this sump pump video i consider this probably one of the most important sump pump videos i've done from the simple fact that it's so difficult to come back from if you don't do this part right in the first place so don't jump around because the comparisons are great and the video kind of builds on itself and you're really cheating yourself if you skip around enjoy everybody so we're going to show you why it's important to always buy your sump pump system depending on how deep your trench is that's how you dictate how tall your outdoor sump pump system needs to be so we have our mock french come up inside the sump pit 10 and a half inches plus you've got whatever you have for a housing that this is sitting on so let's just say 12 inches we need 12 inches of water to turn this on that's the problem guys if your trench is say 18 inches deep or 24 inches deep and you only go down 24 inches what's gonna happen your sump pump the water is going to rise it's going to feed up into the french drain your sump pump's not gonna turn on until it's absolutely flooded then once it's flooded it will run but what if the sump pump float comes up the rain event quits and it never turns on this happens all the time so your trench is full of water trees and shrubs sniffed it out the roots find it they fill your french drain system they take it out so you want to go 12 inches deeper than your deepest trench to your sump pump system that's the one of the hardest things to teach and i'm hoping this demonstration helps people out now what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and we're going to dig this out a little more and we're going to put a deeper unit in and i'm going to show you what that looks like all right let's stay to the end we did a great demonstration the guys put together such a good demonstration for you you're going to want to stay to the end because we're going to cover this in detail it's one of the hardest things for us to teach and seeing you know a picture's worth a thousand words what's a video clip worth plus we're going to use two different size chambers we're going to put in a shallow chamber and we're gonna show you water back feeding i'll give you a little bit of a you know play-by-play on the ground and then we're gonna dig out the sump pit to a deeper depth and we're gonna put in a much taller outdoor sump pump system and we're going to show you guys the difference and how there's no chance at all that you're going to have any back feed into your french drain yard drain roof runoff system whatever it is whatever it is that you're dewatering you don't want the water to backfeed up into that system because if it backfeeds up into the system and the water doesn't get pumped down tree and shrub roots can find their way into that because trees and shrubs are going to be able to smell that out during the drought season and they'll just take out your drainage system so let's get you on the ground here with the crew walk you through the demonstration stay to the end i think the guys did a really good job we got this pump plugged in so here's what's going on water is back feeding up into the french drain system do you see it the water is in the french drain trench what does that do that's going to turn your entire yard drain into a reservoir and the trees and shrubs are going to smell that their roots are going to fill it what could have prevented this all right a sump pump system the float goes up and up and up and up and it has to go all the way to the top before it turns on so by the time you put this in a housing so it's sitting on the floor of a housing and then you got the throw of this you know half horse you know we usually use a half horse outdoors and for this full frame demonstration we're using an m98 so there's 10 and a half inches just from when this float turns off to when this float comes up and turns on that's 10 and a half inches plus you got a couple inches that the sump pump you got to remember it's sitting on a housing inside a sump pit so basically what i'm trying to say is you need to make your sump pit 12 inches a full 12 inches deeper than your trench okay so if the trench is 12 inches then you can do a 24. if a trench is say 16 inches you need to go up in size you have to do a 30 inch so let's continue to do this demonstration remember there's a reason why we have so many sizes we have several sizes we have a 24 inch we have a 30 inch we have a 36 inch we have a 40 inch and we even have a 49 inch outdoor sump pump system all right so we have a french drain trench here in our demonstration it's got one percent slope we're flooding this uh we're getting closer we're getting closer we're getting closer but meanwhile what did we do look it we're back feeding we got one percent slope you can see there's ripple good flow in our system you know we're flooding it there we go it just it just turned on it just turned on now to my point if the rain event stops and you have your float up to the high position what do we end up with this back feeds back feeds and holds water is the problem how do we prevent this we go down one full foot deeper than our deepest trench this is one of the hardest things to explain okay so this right here has ten and a half inches of throw guys think about all right so we're digging this sump pit deeper so that we can put in a deeper housing i want to show you guys the difference and why i encourage you to always go deeper when in doubt you want your sump pump system to be a full 12 inches deeper than the lowest trench the lowest portion of your trench now remember if you're running a roof runoff system to your outdoor sump pump system you got to measure the bottom of that four inch pipe not the top of it a lot of people make that mistake do not measure the top of these pipes your trench and measure the trench bottom that's what you take your measurement from and then you want your sump pump system to be a full 12 inches deeper so if you need to go 30 inches you need a 30 inch sump pump system if you need to go 36 inches then you buy a 36 inch tall outdoor sump pump system i encourage this when in doubt always go deeper you can't mess it up if you go deeper you can't mess it up can you go too shallow and get yourself in trouble absolutely what happens when you go too shallow when you go too shallow you're back feeding water into your whole drainage system if you're in the north that's going to freeze up on you if you're in the south well during the drought season the trees and shrubs are going to fill your french drain system yard drain system whatever that is that's holding water the roots are going to fill all right we're getting pretty deep here this is pretty cool i got a 36 inch outdoor sump pump system housing that we're going to drop in if you're still with us congratulations for getting the true benefit of this video this is a great demonstration now you've seen a demonstration with a shorter housing what we did is we went ahead and dug a deeper hole we're a foot deeper so we started out at 24 inches we had a 24 inch chamber and we were gonna show you guys all right here's an outdoor sump pump pit chamber housing let's show you what the difference is between that and the 30 but i wanted it to be a little exaggerated so i told the guys you know what let's use a 36. even though the fix would have been to go from the 24 to the 30 that would have been the fix in this particular case in this demonstration of said french drain trench on one percent slope look at this so i said let's go 36 inches let's go a foot deeper that way you guys can really see just how a little bit deeper makes such a big difference so here we have you know our standard size trench our french drain trench and usually to get one percent slope you can start out at 10 inches deep and then work your way deeper and we started out at 10 inches deep and then we worked our way deeper towards you know the sump pit it's not a very deep trench because it's not a very long trench if it was long and we were going across the piece of property well then this would be a lot deeper and you would definitely need a full 36 inch tall outdoor sump pump system again in the first example a 30 inch would have been a fix go from the 24 inch to a 30 inch that would have been enough but i just wanted to do it a little bit of an exaggeration so you guys can actually see what only a foot deeper does for you now i also realized that foot deeper that was a lot of digging just to get a foot deep but the benefits speak for themselves look at that it's completely underwater so what is it doing it's running it's on it's in the on position it's running the water doesn't have to backfeed up into the french drain trench if this was a shallower system like in the demonstration with the 24 inch i showed how it backfed up into the trench okay so look at the advantages of having a deeper sump pump hit all the water's falling out of the french drain trench falling down into the sump pump pit this is a 36 then your deepest trench again if you're running roof runoff to your outdoor sump pump pit measure the bottom of the trench not the top of the pipe people make that mistake all the time it's a common mistake so this is why you want to dig a little bit deeper when you do your sump pump system always use the fabric that we sell that's 15 feet by 15 feet for your sump pump pit it makes your job so much easier than trying to take little pieces of fabric and pin it all around the sump pump pit again we sell a 15 foot by 15 foot piece of fabric to line the sump pump pit this is a demonstration this isn't a job site we did this just for you guys all right we're going to cut the water to the pump to the french drain and we're going to stop the water from flooding into the french drain and then we're going to let the pump keep running for the sump pump pit all right so you see the water slowing down right here this sump pump is still pumping it's still pumping why because it's deeper it's so much deeper than that trench what would happen if this was shallow the water would backfeed up into that trench like in the demonstration with the smaller housing look at that look at it it's pumping all the water out of the trench every last drop there's nothing in the trench nothing at all you got to be at least 12 inches deeper than the lowest part of your trench keep that in mind this is a 36 inch screaming demon some pumps shut off you can see there's just a little water in the bottom the screaming demon has that built-in basin in the bottom so it pumps out your added chamber length and doesn't leave any water behind people always want to know what the difference is between the screaming demon and the bad seed there it is that's the difference all right guys until the next video [Music] [Music] you

Channel: FRENCH DRAIN MAN

Views: 45,289

Keywords: sump pump trench depth, digging trench for sump pump, sump pump trench drain, sump pump trench cost, outdoor sump pump for yard drainage, sump pump discharge line underground, sump line repair, sump pump line, sump pump drain line, outdoor sump pump basin, sump pump check valve failure, sump pump check valve leaking, sewer sump pump problems, sump pump keeps running how to fix, outdoor sump pump installation, Outdoor sump pump winter, sump pump discharge line

Id: ORFCgTEPq1I

Length: 38min 52sec (2332 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021