How to Install a Sewage Ejector and Float Alarm

what's up guys welcome to plumbing's cool and this is how you install a sewage ejector so before we get started let's first go through what material and equipment is required in order to carry out this project of course you're going to need a sewage pump be sure to choose a high quality pump with ample horsepower to carry out your needs your plumbing or pump supplier can help you with choosing a suitable pump that's often based upon the number of occupants in the building frequency of use as well as the vertical distance the discharge is required to travel otherwise known as head our pump for today is a penter hydromatic half horsepower submersible pump which is an awesome pump although there are many other brands i'm fond of such as those made by little giant and liberty as an added measure of security we'll also be installing an audible float alarm the purpose of this alarm is to deliver a really loud and annoying audible screech to alert others in the event of rising sewage pit water levels if the pump ever fails or loses power it's also got a 9 volt battery backup in the event of an overall power failure another major item of importance is some format of an isolation valve check valve and union configuration here we have a handy all-in-one pvc solution purposely designed for this application but it's not necessary to use this specific item you can always make your own configuration using separate components and of course we'll also be needing the necessary pipe fittings and glues required for connecting our pump to the piping system of special note is the necessary 2-inch male threaded adapter to accommodate the pump's female threaded discharge outlet some other recommended items are 2 inch stainless steel mechanical joint or mj clamps strong corrosion resistant rope a 9 volt battery for the float alarm and lots of plastic zip ties for keeping all your wiring nice and neat once all the work is done so the first thing we're going to do is unplug our pump because the last thing we want is for this thing to go up on us when we have the pipes open then we proceed to turn off the existing valve if there is already a sewage ejector installed now one big difference between a sewage ejector and a sump pump is that the sewage ejector is required to have an airtight lid on the top to prevent sewer gases from escaping in comparison a sump pit or some pump ejects relatively clear water waste and with this stuff we're usually dealing with nasty stuff so you need to have an airtight lid because you have an airtight lid you'll also need a vent this extra vent will account for any imbalances and pressure when you have discharge draining into the pit and when you have the sewage ejector discharging out of the pit this will keep everything in check the other big difference between a sewage ejector and the sun pit is that the sewage ejector discharge pipe is larger than a typical sump pit here we're looking at a two inch diameter discharge pipe whereas normally a sump pump would require only an inch and a half discharge and because obviously we're discharging more than just liquid here often solids and of course because sewage ejector is also ejecting solids you're also going to need a more powerful pump suit ejector pumps are much more powerful the one we have today i believe is one-third horsepower they are more powerful than the typical sump pump and they are of course more expensive so let's undo this lid now this lid [Music] from my understanding has not been open for a few decades and lucky for me all the all that's been going into this over these last 20 years has been discharged from the customer's water softener and condensation from the furnace through the floor drain [Music] so we shouldn't really be seeing any nasty stuff in here i hope so the reason why we're replacing this sewage ejector today is not because the existing sewage ejector is faulty but we've recently installed or roughed in a three-piece washroom for the basement and the homeowner just wants to make sure that when we do utilize the three-piece washroom they are going to have something reliable that hopefully will last them the next 20 years now make sure to set the bolts aside [Applause] some of these washers are actually stuck on and they're not likely to go anywhere so what we are going to need to do is separate this two inch line this is part of the reason why we ended up shutting off the main valve above so as to prevent any existing or standing water from falling back into the sewage pit another big difference between a sewage ejector and a sun pit is that by code a sewage ejector requires a valve at the downstream side of the check valve this is to ensure that when the sewage ejector is being serviced no existing nasty stuff ends up falling down unintentionally toward against the user and and causing havoc in the building the other thing required between a sump pump is a sewage ejector is a check valve and a union type connection so the order is from order flow unit type connection check valve and isolation valve with a sun pit all that's required is a unit type connection and a check valve the check valve is simply to prevent any flow from backing up into the pit and prematurely filling up the pit once the pump stops pumping so anything that passes the check valve will remain above the check valve unless the check valve's faulty the added requirement for an isolation valve on the sewage ejector is simply because you want to be able to control any nasty stuff that is in that pipe so of course before servicing you will make sure that this isolation valve is turned off otherwise you will be in for a surprise when you remove that check valve so as you can see by the staining on this valve there's some evidence that there's been some sort of leaking in the past now the valve itself isn't a bad valve but it's not really dedicated or designed to accommodate a sewage ejector system even though they are commonly used today we're going to replace this valve along with the check valve and requisite union connection with a specialized valve that i mentioned earlier which has everything integrated into one and will make servicing this in the future much much more easy again ensuring that our valve is closed we're going to proceed by undoing the straps beneath and as you can see water is already beginning to fall out of it and in this case i assure you it is water so what we're going to do is take a bucket place it underneath and as we undo the straps ever so slowly we will direct that water into the bucket now if you're replacing an existing sewage ejector and you don't have the luxury i do like today in the sense that this may not be clear water you will want to take other precautions to make sure that you minimize the touching of any nasty stuff that's in there typically namely wearing gloves now this is the purpose of having a requisite union we can't get to this and service the valve properly unless we can separate it and because these are hub connections and glued connections we can't just simply disconnect it so this band at the bottom is acting as a union connection and here we go now this valve may not be holding properly that's why we're getting excess water i think more reason to change so this indicates that the valve's not holding well check valve seems to work because we have water in it and it's not backing up so especially in plumbing you always want to maintain as much control as possible so now that we separated our check valve we are going to gently move the pipe over and place it into a bucket now again i'm confident that this is clear water and it looks good but in most cases if you're dealing with a sewage ejector there will be sewage so we're going to carefully open the valve which is very stiff indicating that it hasn't been used very often over the years that since it's been installed and odds are pretty good that this valve has not been holding because as i open it very little water is coming out you can put this on the floor now one eternity later it feels like the stem might actually be broken because this should have stopped now even more reason to change it there we go and no water we're good there you go and as you can see if you can see that the gate valve has barely opened so this is busted so let's see now that we have this separate the plan is to dislodge the lid and often times when these lids sit here for years and years oftentimes the gasket is broken or non-existent if it is extreme then you'll need to apply silicone sealant or something to ensure that sewer gases don't escape into the home now we're going to be cutting this portion so that we can take the lid right off and see what we're up against now we could proceed to remove the lid which is a little stuck after all these years of sitting on top of the ejector pit remove the grommets put them in a safe place because we will need this later on proceed to pass through the old [Applause] wiring that was serving the original sewage ejector back out through the holes that's the bottom of our sewage ejector pit pick cover and here's the gasket that prevents sewer gases from escaping out now these pits could be made of different materials this one in particular is a plastic housing with a steel lid which is just fine the nice thing about this is that there is a separate connection for the vent that does not interfere with the lid so the vent can remain while your service is your detector so let's take a look inside see what it looks like and as we suspected it's rather clear we can see to the bottom because this was only used for a floor drain which was discharging water softener and condensate from the furnace so because a floor drain is still a sanitary unit it must discharge into a sealed container but otherwise it doesn't look too bad in there no smell and nothing nasty to report so now let's proceed to pull out the old one [Music] it's a tiny one much smaller and lighter not as heavy duty as the one we're going to install and this actually does not look like a sewage ejector to me this is a sump pump which well i think it's a sump pump um some pumps are typically not designed to discharge debris the opening at the bottom of this sump pump let's call it a sewage ejector is only about an inch and a half or maybe two inch diameter um sewage ejectors are bigger the discharge ironically is two inch but usually the opening underneath the switch ejector is much much bigger than this and of course much more heavy duty the other one is much more heavier to lift than is this one here it's a tightening waste water pump oh this titan's going to be retired now before dropping in the new sewage ejector we're going to prepare it and we're going to take some measurements because as i said earlier we want our pump outlet to pass beyond the floor level straight up and we leave a little bit of extra room to apply some sort of union connection and the valve and check valve assembly so we're going to determine roughly how high we need to go with our piece of pipe and i'm going right to the bottom of the pit now we have a little bit of slack because where the connection um where the male connection connects to the pump is a little bit higher than the bottom of the pit but 36 inches will suffice so it's going to be a little bit higher by the time we cut it so our piece of pipe is going to be 36 inches and we're going to prepare that before we drop it into the sewage pit so we begin by taking our two inch mip or male adapter applying teflon tape to the male threads turning counter or rather turning clockwise and three or four turns will suffice now the reason why we're using a male adapter is because all pumps have a female thread and that allows us this allows us to adapt to the female thread make sure because we are dealing with plastic it's not cross threaded sometimes what ends up happening the machining on the cast pump is not the same as the mill threads in the sense that it might be a little tighter than expected but the threads are the same they're typical npt or nominal pipe thread so we get it in there as snugly as possible and because we're dealing with pvc 15 system 15 we're going to use special pvc system 15 one step glue so we'll take one side of our three foot a 36 inch long piece apply glue to the male side and equally apply glue to the female adapter and some of you may be wondering why are we using pvc 15 when we have abs in the system well there's a specific reason for that which we'll get to momentarily now one thing i encourage you to do when installing any pump or actually when installing any piece of equipment always always check the instructions some pumps in particular require a separate 1 8 bleeder hole to prevent air lock from occurring between the check valve and the pump itself now this pump in particular has its own little weeper hole at the bottom which will prevent air in the event that airlock occurs the air will prevent any discharge from moving up through the discharge pipe so you want to check for that if the pipe if the pump does require a bleeder for airlock simply drill a 1 8 diameter hole into the outlet discharge right near the bottom where it discharges out of the pump and i like to face it downward because you do get some spray coming out but in this case we don't need it because well this is a good pump another thing i'd like to do as a measure of good workmanship although we're already given a nice heavy duty handle here for servicing and for removing and transporting the pump i like to add a piece of rope something that's not going to corrode and wear out over time as it sits in there and i'd like to provide a bit of slack with this rope and leave it suspended just below the lid and we'll show you how to do that later on this will make it much easier and much less messy to remove the pump in case you need to do so in the future now before we proceed to drop this puppy in let me uh take a moment just to explain how a sump pump or a sewage ejector works in essence they work the same way the question is how does the sump pump or sew ejector know when to turn on and how does it turn on you see this little dinghy thing over here well that's a float switch so what happens is when there's low level of fluid or liquid inside the pit this float switch merely dangles there now as water or effluent begins to fill the pit this begins to float hence the name float switch now once it floats say run horizontal and just beyond you'll hear a little click all that this is is nothing more than a simple circuit when it's hanging down the circuit is open when that little mechanism flips in there it closes the circuit and allows current to run through the wires on the other side you have kind of a plug that's got a piggyback on it that allows another plug to be plugged into it this is the float switch plug this is your on and off for the pump when that flow switch is down the circuit remains open and does not allow power to run through it from the from the outlet now behind this is where the actual pump itself plugs in once this circuit is closed this gets allowed to be energized because now the circuit closes and allows electricity through it and that's what turns the pump on and of course it stays on until everything gets discharged and that's part of the importance of a check valve if you did not have a check valve installed whatever you discharged upward will come back down and that's not a good thing so that's in essence how any pit pump works all right so now let's drop this puppy in and here's where the rope comes in handy as we get to a certain point we won't have as much grip on our lovely handle so we can utilize our rope to help ease it in you can also apply a bit of leverage using the pipe but be careful don't take it for granted because it is just a simple plastic adhesive connection joint and this is how it's looking on the inside so far but we're not done yet we're going to install one other little little special piece of equipment which is called a float alarm so the purpose of a float alarm is that in the event that this pump ceases to operate for whatever reason whether it doesn't get power whether it fails toilets do not care whether some pumps or sewage ejectors work or not the the level of water will continue to rise and it will get to a point where it's going to have to come out of somewhere so you want to catch it before it comes out of somewhere so that's the purpose of a float alarm as we mentioned with the float switch a float alarm is something similar it has a full switch but its primary purpose is to trigger an audible alarm in case the water level gets too high so that being said we want to install the float alarm at a position significantly higher but not too high you want the audible arm to give enough warning so that whoever realizes that there's a problem they have enough time to get to it you don't want to put the float switch just beneath the lid of the sun pit you want to put a little bit lower fairly bit lower let's say depending on where the outlet is there's our discharge pipe coming in that's picking up all the basement plumbing and you want to put that flow switch probably so that it triggers just when the water level might have to reach that inlet any higher you're just filling up the pipes so we're going to take a little float switch that came with our tank alert audible alarm which looks very much like the other float switch and works the same way and we're going to sort of decide where is the proper place to place this float switch so i'm comparing it to the outlet or rather the inlet of the building drain and i propose that this may be adequate which is approximately difficult to tell on the video but you're about eight inches below by the time it starts to fill up so what we're going to do is take the gear clamp provided we're going to open it up using our 5 16 nut driver and we're going to slide the gear clamp through the bracket provided make sure you put the bracket the correct way and that correct way is so that this little piece is sticking out not inward i'm going to proceed to tighten our gear clamp not too tight just enough to hold that bracket now we'll proceed to slide the bracket up and over our discharge pipe which is not connected to anything yet and we could begin to make it fairly tight to the pipe but not too tight because we want to be able to slide it around and there is also another critical step we need to take before actually tightening it up there's a purpose to the bracket so what this bracket does is it allows the provided float switch that comes with the audible arm to hang so we insert the float switch first we run it through the bottom part you want about four inches hanging from where it comes out of this horizontal part of the bracket to where the yellow piece begins say about four inches and then what you want to do is loop this and all that this does it allows any drippings or water to basically drop back down into the pit once you have it positioned you can proceed to tighten your gear clamp and when you do this will tighten and it will not move and we're just going to tighten this nugget up a little bit and double check it now the important thing is whenever you're positioning your pump and you're installing a float switch you want to make sure that your float switch either of the float switches rather stay out of the path of inlet discharge that's coming in from your drainage system because what often goes along with sewage water is debris and other nasty stuff that i won't mention particularly toilet paper and what can sometimes happen if your discharge ends up landing on top of the float switches and you end up with solids getting stuck and mucking this up this can kick the float switch to the point where it can't lift anymore and then of course you have to call someone in to service it so whatever you do you want to make sure that your floats are clear from any inlet discharge that's coming into the pit now that looks pretty good now the more we tighten it the more secure this will stay and i think we might be in good position we're going to double and triple check the float positions to make sure that they're not in the way now another thing you can't see it on camera but where i'm pointing my nut driver that's where the discharge is coming in i've got my float switch to the side for the pump and i've got my other float switch for the float alarm another thing you want to be cautious of is that you do not want this float switch to be too close to the wall so what might end up happening is that the float switch can get caught in the upright position where it's normally on and the circuit is closed and prevent the pump from shutting off so you don't want you don't want to get pinned in between the wall and the pump or any other object like the pipe or anything like that now they're usually pretty good and they don't usually get stuck but it's just something to keep your eye on in other words you want to leave your floats as clear and open as possible now before we can do anything else we need to make sure that where our pump is sitting if we're happy with the position we need to make sure that that lid which has a very specific outlet if you recall can slide through the pipe rather the pipe can slide through the cover and we can match up the holes on the pit so let's do that another thing we want to ensure is that all this loose slack is also nice and tightly kept clean so what we're going to do is take all the wires that are protruding and we're going to try and bundle them up using zip tie and given the depth of this pit i think one zip tie will suffice in this case okay you want to keep as least amount of slack as possible on these items actually pass everything through except for the rope and i'll show you why in a minute don't be cheap give them plenty of rope to work with it doesn't cost a lot of money so here it is nice and tight and we tighten our zip tie now we can be assured that all of this will remain out of the way and of course keep things neat and clean so snip off your ties now back to the rope we want the user to be able to grab this rope in case he needs service ink so we want to keep this accessible and away from all the yucky stuff so i'm simply going to do let's tie the this rope and it's going to be there in case they need it now the question is how do they access it without it getting wet what i recommend you do take another zip tie feed it through the existing zip tie and simply keep the rope out there [Music] just so it has nowhere to go and make sure of course the rope is also out of the way and free and clear see this just in case i'm not too fond of it theoretically this can get caught here so what we're going to do is actually i'm going to lower this and i'm going to put another zip tie at the very bottom so that that float alarm has zero chance of getting caught in on that wire okay snip it off and that should suffice now let's slip our cover on to see what it looks like so if you recall the two grommets on this cover is the bigger grommet which accommodates the pipe i'm going to slip that on which is sometimes tricky we'll put the grommet on separately and now we have to feed three wires through the second hole three wires as opposed to two on the previous installation because now we have a float alarm switch to deal with so i advise grabbing the ends of all three wires and just begin by running all three wires through do not leave any slack inside the sewage ejector pit now at this stage we're not tightening the lid on yet all we're doing is making sure that the original screw holes can align when we do decide to place this cover back on we're actually going to leave this so that we can assess to make sure that the sewage ejector is properly working before we close everything up so let's just leave this here for now and make sure that our pump will operate and it will sit nicely you can make micro adjustments because you generally positioned in the previous step okay and then ultimately this grommet's going to go on there as well now here's why we utilize pvc piping instead of abs this component is made of pvc piping now in order to attach abs to this on either side we would utilize typically what is referred to as transition glue now pvdc to abs transition glue is not certified or designed for pressure applications arguably this is a pressure applications and they don't want to take any chances so we're going to do is create some stub outs all in pvc and then while on this side on the lower side we're going to utilize a mechanical joint clamp or mj clamp or mj coupling that will allow us even though we have a union connection here at the bottom allow us to easily slip off the entire assembly if we need to service this in the future and as well on the downstream side of the discharge where transitions to abs will utilize a second amg coupling to also facilitate the servicing of this system and also it will ensure that the abs and the pvc transition stay together we do not need to rely on transition glue so there you have it our stubbed out combination check valve ball valve and union connection so in essence our mj clamp is going to be acting as a secondary union connection i likely would not disturb this unit connection in the future if i need to service it i'll merely take it out of the mj clamp ends and then i can nice and easily slide the cover off so to install the mj clamp first make sure that you apply your grommet and if the grommet is stiff it may be to your benefit to apply some oil or lubricant or water because you have to make sure that that grommet gets inserted properly into the hole actually i happen to have some silicone grease and we are going to try to carefully pry around the pipe hopefully with some success all i know will be successful one way or another we always win there we go oh no it's easy okay gaskets starting to come off at the bottom so we have to be careful make sure that our gasket our lid gasket is centered now if there was any lubricant applied to the pipe you do want to make sure that it gets wiped off before you proceed now very important before you proceed to install the check valve valve assembly you need to make sure that you installed it in the proper direction of flow now again code book dictates from the discharge to the outlet the order is union connection check valve followed by valve so the valve should always be furthest away from the pump very important and we're going to position it like so so that it's accessible by whoever needs to service it and it's also nice and straight over the pump now typically mj couplings or mechanical joint couplings or bands as some people call them are designed for mechanical joint cast iron soil pipe but these are a godsend when it comes to connecting hubless plastic piping because plastic piping is schedule 40 therefore the same thickness as cast iron soil pipe even though these are not formally officially approved for plastic piping it works amazing and we'll position it straight like that and proceed to tighten it now when you do tighten it make sure that how you how your screws align are accessible to whoever needs to come back and service this guy now by putting the check valve lower that means that much less water is going to fall back into the pit which will be very helpful with preventing unnecessary or premature fill up of the pit there we go now simple matter of connecting the remaining piping once your entire piping is assembled we can proceed to tidy things up and of course to test find a good spot for your audible float alarm that is accessible and also in your power outlet and be sure to supply and install also the 9 volt battery for battery backup in case you get a power failure and proceed to connect the two terminals coming from the float alarm switch to the unit the order of wiring does not matter because remember you're just making a circuit now ready for testing prior to testing please ensure that your valve is in the open position as indicated here specifically that the valve handle is parallel to the pipe to close the valve simply turn the handle one quarter turn so that the handle is perpendicular to the pipe also ensure that your union connections and gear clamps are fully tightened how to test so the first thing you want to do is test worst case scenario before you even turn on the pump you want to make sure that your float alarm will activate in ample time in the event that this pump fails so what you want to do is make sure that you leave your pump unplugged that's the only way you're going to tell for sure if your float alarm works properly once you're happy with your float alarm working properly then you can proceed if you don't need to make any adjustments in height you can proceed with plugging in the pump and seeing how it ejects and if there are any leaks so this is just a bit of a waiting game as we wait for the pit to fill up as a note you may be able to see from the video that the pump is fully submerged inside the water and notice the float switch of the pump is actually pretty much passed horizontal so this should activate the pump if i were to plug it in right now we're just waiting for our float alarm to also flip upward if you see that your float alarm switch has still quite a way to go while at the same time we've almost reached the level of the inlet i would say now would be a good time to readjust that so that we lower the flow the float alarm so that it comes on sooner and after a bit of an adjustment by lowering this band we can see that the float alarm is now horizontal and should flip anytime now and there you have it if you cannot hear me that is a good sign that me the float alarm is working and we can just silence that hopefully i'll get my hearing back so our float alarm is successful that is a good level for what we need now we will proceed to tighten that and this should be good to go um it's just a matter of plugging in the thumbnail and here we go plugging in the sewage ejector for the first time we've already confirmed that the float alarm works and we can see that it's well submerged and that float switch is fully upside down now so let's plug it in we made sure that all our unions are tightened all our connections are tight everything is glued so let's see if this works looks good and it will turn off now once the float switch has returned to a vertical facing down and i think that's a success guys now it's just a matter of details tidying everything up making sure everything looks good and we can finish up this job and so that's how you install a sewage ejector pump and a float alarm if you like this video please be sure to plunge that like button subscribe to this channel let me know if there's anything else you want to see leave your comments below see if we can make it happen thanks for watching have a great day

Channel: PlumbingsCool

Views: 59,196

Keywords: sewage, ejector, sump, pit, force main, head, pressure, vent, sewer, drain, drainage, valve, check valve, union, MJ clamps, mechanical joint, transition glue, discharge, float, alarm, switch, audible, overflow, little giant, liberty, effluent, waste, graywater, blackwater, sanitary fixture, building drain, building sewer, gravity, underground, PVC, ABS, grundfos, Pentair, Hydromatic, Grinder pump, septic system, sanitary waste, plumbing, plumber, apprenticeship, flow, sanitary, pump, sewage pump, float alarm, MJ, rise

Id: 9mD9O203-Zw

Length: 43min 51sec (2631 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021