Do's & Don'ts of Sump Basin for Your French Drain

hey good morning chuck here with apple james let's take a look at do's and don'ts of sump basins you know we put in hundreds of pumps every year and the sump basins hundreds of these things basements crawl spaces and in the backyard this is a proper basin and if you look at this look closely it's pretty obvious you see where they've got the nipple already stuck out see that they've got knockouts all the way around you can see they've got an area here and see where the knockout is this is the minimum depth that you can bring a line into this sump basin why because the sump pump sits down here on the bottom and you need an area to collect water some basins with inlet lines coming in at the bottom create problems let me show you why here and you know i'm really happy to see some of these people telling you these ideas they've got great ideas but what i'm really excited about is they're starting to use the zoller m98 which i've been telling you for the past 30 years that's the best pump on the market and they're just starting to realize that and i hope they continue to use the zoller products like i said that american-made product of course these are the best pumps on the market what makes them the best it's not that they're made in america is that they're made with cast iron and the heat dissipates very quickly like i said we put in hundreds of pumps every year backyards crawl spaces basements that's why you see the nipples and the knockouts on the side you bring water into the side of the pet can you achieve more fall yes you can bring that line clear down to here you could also make a deeper pit if you want to build your own sump basin using a culvert that's great but do not bring the pipes in at the bottom that is just such a no-no so if someone's showing you this type of ready-made basin with this giant inlet line coming in with no collection on the bottom you're going to replace that pump so often remember a good zoller costs 300 bucks and without a collection area for that pump that pump's going to burn out pretty quick we are the innovators of backyard pumps over 30 years no one was doing this and what we found is the sump basin needs a solid lid do not put a grate over top of your sump basin instead use a catch basin to bring that surface water into your basin just another example of those little 15 dollar basins that save you so much money like i said we've been installing sump pumps and sump basins for well over 30 years in fact we install a sump pump nearly every day whether it be in charlotte with kevin's office or here in orlando where i'm installing in florida we install so many pumps and the best thing i've seen out there on these channels is that they are beginning to use the zoller m98 you can see this right away that inlet line coming in number one is way too big but you can see that the pump would not actuate so water would lay in that line the pump needs an area for water to collect this is the basics of sump pumps remember the sump pump needs to set just below the inlet line can you see where my finger is this is the minimum depth of the inlet line these ideas are pretty cool but they really don't work and you know the idea of a drop-in basin that's just really not feasible every job is different there's different levels to every depth of install we have hundreds of videos showing you how to install the inlet line and the outlet line coming into these sump basins and you'll notice that when we install them in all of our videos that we're installing the sump basin digging the trench and then we make the mark of where we're coming into that sump basin here's an example of a recent install and you can see exactly what we're talking about so here's our zoller m98 plumbed and discharging through the side of the sump basin you can see the inlet line that brings in all the water from the catch basin and from the french drain notice the level of the inlet line it is above the float you need an area for water to collect for this sump pump to work properly otherwise it's going to burn out very quickly and at 300 dollars for a new sump pump i just hope that you understand why this is so important and that what you might be seeing on other channels is wrong setting up that inlet line on your sump basin really is a custom process when you install a sump pump inside of a sump basin in your backyard you need a solid lid you can bring that water in here at the side but do not bring it down here at the bottom that does not work properly that pump will just continue to run okay let's take a look at this sump basin and you tell me what's wrong with this setup can you see all the problems that exist here number one is that there is an inlet line coming in at the bottom of this basin and i'm going to fill up that catch base and let the water come over here and show you why you do not put this down at the bottom you notice that there's another one here much higher it's actually above the float above the pump this is the proper way to do that so number one we've got an inlet line coming in that's way too low number two no check valve you see that no check valve and number three they've got this monstrosity of a pipe coming up and discharging above ground they're kind of tacky don't you think but let's take a look this is a zoller m53 they've got down here a third of a horsepower and it works great you know it's a good good pump it doesn't pump as fast as the m98 but they said this isn't working so i'm going to fill it up and let's take a look okay i unplugged the pump and we're going to go ahead and let this fill up you can see the water coming in from the inlet line remember i've already dug some of this up out here because i know what we're going to do so i've started to do that but we'll get to that so let this water fill up inside the pit and show you why you don't want to have an inlet line coming in at the bottom of your basement notice the pump isn't the float's not even coming up yet it's not even beginning to float look how high that water is getting and look what's happening to that inlet line it's totally submerged in the water so sand and debris gets stuck it's this lays in that pipe even if it starts to drain that line's filling up with debris each time that this recycles each time that the pump kicks on we're going to put a new zoller m98 in here and we're going to send this notice this monstrosity coming up out of the ground we're going to actually drill a hole through the side of the basin and bring this line out underground and discharge it all underground we're going to go to daylight okay that pipe's totally submerged look at that and the pump the float still hasn't come up to where it actuates yet that's a big problem right there okay that float just reached the spot where it should actuate and i'm going to go ahead and power the pump remember that that floats bad and it's kind of stuck in the on position so i'm going to power the pump and watch what happens pump kicks on it takes all the water out and there's where it would shut off you see that water still laying in the pipe down there it doesn't it doesn't go anywhere it just stays there and begins to fill back up again this causes the pump to run and run and run and what happens is during a smaller rain that float comes up to about this level and it stays there for days and days what happens is the float switch goes bad because it's at the wrong level the pump should remove all the water and be at the bottom in the off position but when that pumps here when that float sticks here you can see the lever it gets stuck burns out that pump every time okay before i pull the pump i just want you to see notice this line totally dry right no water see this bottom line where they brought it in at the bottom of the basin see how much water is sitting in that pipe you see the sand and debris that lays in the line total no no does not work properly burn this pump out right away okay let's set up the zoller m98 let me show you why this is so important for these sump basins when you're putting in the m98 zola m98 that's the pump to use but let's take a look you know when you get your zoller m98 if you go to lowe's they actually sell the same exact same one now at lowe's so easy for you to go pick up or you can order it online through amazon or whatever you want comes in the box when you lift up this pump always use the handle and it is heavy inside the box there's a warranty card and what you do is you scan you see the scan marking up there you scan that and you can register your pump which is important so let's take a look at the pump real quick you can see it's solid cast iron like i said it's it's really heavy and it's got a float with a protection bar with a protection bar around it this float as water level rises in that sump basin it comes up can you hear that click it kicks it on when water level goes down then it shuts it off so it's very cost effective i mean very cost effective but what we don't want but what we don't want is to have that line your inlet line from your french drains or your downspouts or whatever you're tying into the sump basin come in at the bottom of the pit because the line just it stays full of water the pump can never take that out so let's set up the pump you start with a male threaded inch and a half adapter you can see the threads and you can see the slip joint this is inch and a half this is going to screw into the port of that pump it's right here and you just screw it in be careful be careful not to cross thread this otherwise you got a problem put it on there as tight as you can hand tight and that's set to go so the first thing we do is we cut about a five or six inch piece of pvc what we want to do we're not going to glue anything yet we're going to stick this in the mail threaded inch and a half adapter and we want to make sure that this little riser is above the protection bar because we want to set our check valve inside the pit we don't want this pipe coming up and going out across the ground tying it to a fence or the house or whatever we want it to be a very clean installation that's so tacky to run that across the ground so we want to keep it underground and you really have to have the check bow it's very important someone said something about oh they don't put a check bow in there because it freezes that's crazy so we need to have a check valve to keep that water from coming back down the line okay next you need a 3 16 inch drill bit and your handy dandy black and decker and what we're going to do is we're going to drill a pressure relief hole here because we don't this thing builds up a lot of pressure we need to have a relief hole the relief hole is below the check valve real simple quick okay next you need a 5 16 inch nut driver and you get your check valve out now remember the check valve is very important even if it's in your frozen north it doesn't matter you need a check valve and there's always going to be markings on that check valve this one has arrows can you see them it tells you the direction of the flow water is coming up through the line up through the riser so we're going to set the check valve in place the check valves held together with stainless steel no hub bands and it actually comes from inch and a quarter to inch and a half simply put it on make sure that you got it all the way down to the bottom of that in that no hub coupling and then tighten it up just as tight as that drill can make it that's really all we're going to do here at this point when we put this in the sump basin once we put this in the sump basin we'll add another riser but it's only going to come up about this high and we'll put a 90 on it and then we'll turn and come out through the side of the sump basin because we want this to be underground remember it's so tacky you did all this work to install the basin all your french drains downspout finish the job put it underground and let it discharge to daylight hey i apologize about the sweat it is very hot here in florida quick note you know i posted this video yesterday and it's actually the comment section is actually under review so i'm basically reposting and i guess the person took the bait so let's leave it at that okay we've put the m98 down in the sump base and pulled the other one out let me just show you a couple things we're going to drill a hole through the side of the pet so that we can bring the discharge line out underground don't bring this line up and run it across the ground or tie it to the fence that it's definitely going to freeze if you're up north but more than that it looks so tacky you need a small little insert riser that goes into the top of the check valve we'll tighten all this up later then you need a 90 inch and a half 90. that's going to set on top and then we just make that measurement as it comes through we're going to use a two inch hole saw that is the exact outer diameter of inch and a half pipe so it makes a very secure hole the pipe will slide right through no debris can get in nothing works really good using your handy dandy portable drill with the two inch hole saw we're going to go ahead and cut a hole through the outside so using your portable drill with a two inch hole saw i'm going to drill a hole right through here and you could measure this but i'm pretty good at lining this up been doing it for 30 plus years real simple hole saw just cuts a perfect hole next you're going to use a smaller piece of pvc just to get started through here and you can see it lines up just right perfect perfect fit one more thing that i would suggest even though you can take this apart at the check valve is to put a no hub right here because if you need to service that pump very simple unconnect disconnect the no hub and then you can pull the pump right out so we're going to do that right now so using a another small insert i'm going to go ahead and stick it part of it into the no hub we'll tighten all this up and glue it here in just a second but for right now we just want to get it started so i can show you the discharge is going to hook up we've already got that section trench so we're going to go ahead and hook this up this is called a no hub coupling no hub coupling and we tighten that up with your handy dandy black and decker you believe somebody actually made fun of my drill whoops okay yeah so i haven't glued that up yet and now we're going to re repeat the scenario that we just showed you with the old pump remember it went bad so i'm going to add the water to the catch basin it's going to come in at the bottom of that bottom pipe and you're going to see why that is such a big no-no and why that pump can you see that inlet line that coming in at the bottom that line's full of water so let me give you the scenario let's just say that it only rains you know a quarter of an inch so your system whether it's french drains or catch basins you know whatever the system is not enough water to fill up the pit and actuate it so what happens is this float gets half ways up and this bar that actuates the pump gets sitting here for days and weeks at a time it freezes up and the pump goes bad because the float goes bad so the pump just kicked on and you'll see that see how it stopped the pump has stopped pumping look how much water and sand and debris lays in that line if you have a hundred feet of this french drain or yard drain downspout drain and i mean look at the debris that's going to lay in that line i think you can see that the list of reasons why you do not bring the inlet line at the bottom of the pit is quite long proper installation is where the inlet line comes in above you know apple drains has been installing sump pumps and things in the backyard for over 30 years we are the innovators of this idea i think we know what we're talking about so what we had to do was we had to add a cat space in here this is a double outlet catch basin so there's a line going that way and a line going this way which goes over to the sump basin you see we've got the solid lid cover on it remember that we've got our discharge line running out underground and it goes out through you know beyond here and goes out to daylight so we had to put an extension because that line was so deep we had to put an extension on here and we added the grate now we just go ahead and finish back filling and we're done proper sump basin installation hey this is chuck with apple drains reminding you that if you believe you can do something i guarantee you can do it have a great day [Music] do [Music] be sure to subscribe and watch these other great videos on rainwater drainage you

Channel: Apple Drains

Views: 83,450

Keywords: sump pump basin, backyard sump pump, sump liner, sump basin, How to install a sump pump, solar power, 100 watt solar, solar charger, Apple Drains, French Drain, Exterior, Foundation, Waterproofing, Gravel perforated pipe, yard drain, trench drain, sump pump, french drain tips, DIY, Florida, channel drain, Charlotte NC, Catch Basin, Perforated Pipe, NDS, ADS, Pipe, www.appledrains.com

Id: niJA4VcGM1I

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 02 2020