How To Install A Sump Pump In Basement

how's it going you guys it's scott with everyday home repairs and today i'm going to show you how to install a sump pump i have my sump pump pit behind me and currently i have a primary and secondary unit down in that pit with a battery backup i'm going to simplify things take all that out and actually upgrade to this zoller m98 overall the install is probably quite a bit easier than you think and you can look down on the timeline of this video and you'll see the chapters broken up so you can kind of jump around to fit your project and where you need help now there are a couple things i outlined throughout the install to help you avoid any issues and make sure you have your setup correctly and i will also touch on even though i'm going to have a single pump down in the pit how am i going to handle redundancy how am i going to have a backup just in case the power goes off or i have a pump failure so let's jump into it and show you the setup that we're working with so we have our main sump pit here with a cover and that is just a loose fitting cover i prefer cover like that because i can actually see from that big slot what's going on down in the pit which i do not like to have a cover for a standard sump pump that completely seals and i can't see what's going on because it does limit what i can do in terms of troubleshooting i have a battery backup system here in the lower left-hand corner and then i have two power cords that actually go into the outlet up here those two power cords is because there's actually two pumps there's the primary pump and a backup secondary pump down in the pit so that's why those two power cords are there that's the setup that i will be removing and again simplifying things down but before i remove that i just want to caution you that you want to set yourself up for success in projects like this and what i mean by that is you don't want to remove a working sump pump if you know it's cycling every 10 minutes or 20 minutes and there's rain in the forecast so you're going to pull this out you're going to grab your sump pump maybe go down the home improvement store if you haven't already ordered them online like i have and then you might be without a working sump pump and you're starting to get water into your pit and that can just be a really bad scenario just ensure before you remove it that you have a nice long window prior to needing a functioning sump pump to get the water out of your basement or crawl space removal is very straightforward so i'm just going to unplug the power cords undo the bottom band clamp and top it's kind of choose your adventure here if your pump has been running recently you probably have quite a bit of water in the pipe so you can either slowly let it leak out or you can remove it quickly and possibly take a little bath like i did there once that's disconnected remove the check valve reaching down grabbing the handle on top of the pump and just pulling it out of the pit so i just want to give you a little bit of a comparison my old unit to the new unit and you can see the simplicity from the new unit as we look back to what i just removed so this unit because it has battery backup and a primary and secondary pump it actually has four power cords that run in and out of these pumps here you got your primary pump sitting right here in the secondary and then we have the associated switches or floats with the primary and then one over here with that secondary pump additionally we see the y pvc y coming together from the discharge on those two pumps and quite a few more band clamps down below i had purchased this barracuda and it's a model number 92911 only a couple years back thinking i was doing the right thing i didn't do a ton of research on brands and see what reviews were but this had the redundant system it made me confident but looking back i don't love the brand decision and just the overall complexity is probably not right for me now after doing a little more research because i had a failure with this unit i'm very confident in the solar product and especially their higher end product which i could not actually find at home depot menards or lowe's lowe's carries the brand but it's a somewhat cost reduced model now from what i have found the m98 is one of the highest recommended from professionals that do this all day every day do it for a living so i needed to order this one off amazon to make sure i got the specific model that has all cast iron construction opposed to the one that i could get at lowe's which was somewhat cost reduced so you'll see that link down in the description and in fact you'll see a link to our amazon store which has all the different recommendations from the projects over the years including tools or components like this sump pump so let's jump in and install this guy we'll start taking a few measurements and really because of the simplicity of this design it's pretty easy to install now to minimize the amount of trips that you have to take to the home improvement store i always like to just check things over before i go and grab parts one thing to confirm is i would expect you to have inch and a half pvc here now usually you can just look on the side of the pvc and you'll see the label indicating it is inch and a half which is what i have this same discharge pipe going out of my basement is going to work for my new setup then i would inspect my check valve so if your old check valve still looks like it is in good condition just use a screwdriver and push that up through to make sure the gate is opening and closing and the gate is in good condition if it is i would just go ahead and reuse that check valve for this install i'm actually going to use this one because it has the clear housing which will be a good demo for you guys of how that check valve is actually working during the pump cycle and then once the pump cycle shuts down so it's kind of a cool little demo now we know our situation with our check valve so from the check valve to my m98 is really just a section of inch and a half pvc which will be then glued to this threaded fitting that is just going to thread right into the housing here for the m98 you could always bring your sump pump with you in the car go to the home improvement store grab a few fittings go out match them up make sure everything's working and that might save you an extra trip and if time if you're very time sensitive again because water is filling into your pit that might be the best approach so then i just grabbed a four foot section of inch and a half which is going to give me more than enough for what i need i could even grab a two foot section and that would have done it for me and because i don't do this very often i'm always having to grab these combo packs of the primer and cement this is the red all-purpose cement so it works great for pvc once you've assessed that situation you have all your parts now all you have to do is i'm going to install the check valve and then take that measurement on how long i need to cut my inch and half pvc to go from the bottom of the check valve to the sump pump itself there's a few different ways to get that measurement but just to make sure we get it correct i'm going to install the new check valve in place once i have that in place then i'm going to put the fitting into the new sump pump and then drop that sump pump into the pit where it will be resting once the final setup is completed now once that's in place all i'm going to do is take my tape measure and i'm going to measure from the inside lip of that fitting which was where the inch and a half pvc will set up to about a half an inch above that band clamp now that was 21.5 inches so i'll go ahead and mark that on my pvc and then with a hacksaw just cut that pvc to length i'll prime the inside of the fitting the outside of the inch and a half pvc and then i'll do the same thing with the cement once you have that press and twist and then hold that in place to make sure it doesn't back off until it sets up i now have everything i need to go ahead and get this guy installed and get that water that's starting to accumulate in my pit out the discharging outside but there is one thing you need to do before the final install and that is drilling a hole in this perfectly good pvc pipe which does not sound intuitive and something you wouldn't want to do because once the pump goes you're going to have a big old leak coming out the side that is true but without that hole you might get into a scenario called air lock so this hole is called a weep hole or a vent hole and there actually is one already installed in this cast iron base which helps to prevent air lock but that hole can get plugged over time so having an additional hole pointing down on this discharge pipe will help you avoid airlock in the future since this is a bottom feed pump the water comes up under you can get a pocket of air caught between the check valve and the bottom of the impellers so what that does is it puts the impellers in an air pocket and thus locking out your pump from actually pushing water so without the impeller being able to grab the water it can't push the water up through your discharge pipe it's just going to spin in air and do nothing this is a very common principle in any sort of pump and that's why often if you're dealing with pumps sometimes you need to prime the pump you need to get hydraulic fluid or water or whatever that fluid is into the pump so the pump can actually start working because it's completely ineffective if the impeller is in air so the positioning of this weep hole is not exact i'll go ahead and thread in my discharge pipe and the critical thing you want to do is you're just putting in the pipe between that check valve and the housing itself so you're going to use a 1 8 of an inch drill bit so then you'll get the drill bit started but once it's started you want to make sure you angle your drill bit so the hole is actually pointing down so when the water shoots out it's going to shoot down into the pit not up out of the pit [Music] and that is all there is to installing your weep hole and again that is critical to the operation of your sump pump now we'll put this guy in the pit and test everything out so dropping the pump and the pit and now all i have to do is line up the check valve and the pipe itself i'll reposition the pump a little bit remember always use that handle when you're pulling the pump out of the pit or repositioning it checking all the band clamps to make sure that they are tight now i'll go ahead and plug it in and it goes right to work so you see that check valve open up now with this pit i had mentioned before that four inch corrugated on the back side there you'll see water just dumping out of that so as the pump works it pulls the water out of the pit but that four inch corgate is going to continue to put water back so that's how much build up we have then you'll also see the weep hole see the water spraying out of that weep hole during the pumping cycle and then it turned off so you saw that check valve close now the pit's going to quickly fill back up and then it's going to continue to cycle back and forth so you'll see the check valve working you'll see the water shooting out of the weep hole during the pumping cycle so this pump's gonna have to work quite a bit longer to get all the water pulled out and it actually did just start raining outside looking a little closer view you'll see that we pull i might actually position a little bit lower because i do have some spray coming up but the cover for the pit will actually block that so last thing to talk about is redundancy in these systems or a backup system for me i'll tell you what i'm going with but you also need to look at your own scenario just understanding your setup of your sump pump how frequently it runs when you have rain how frequently it runs when you don't have rain seasonal changes just understanding that is going to set you up for avoiding any situations where you might have water on your floor now what i'm going to do is i did take the primary pump so i took off the secondary pump i placed the primary pump in the pit i measured out a tube so i set this pump up where it still functions i tested it it moved water out so i'm going to set this down here on my storage shelf and if i need to if my zoller m98 fails i can plop this right in it's already completely configured and i can be running as long as i have power within literally seconds the other things i'm going to do is i did get this pump spy smart outlet i'm going to test it out i haven't tested it out yet but that's going to give me the ability to monitor my setup to see when the last time it ran and also it has an integrated water detection sensor which is something i want i want to place that sensor at a level where if the water gets to that level i know bad things are going on and since this is connected to wi-fi it could alert me so i'm going to test that out and i'll let you guys know on a separate video how that works out so the last thing is what happens if i don't have power and we have a lot of rain so i'm getting a lot of water down here and i don't have the ability to plug that sump pump into the wall and then it pumps the water out so what i have on order is a portable power unit from eco flow and it should have enough capacity to run the m98 sump pump which is no small task for these portable power units which are just extremely fancy batteries now i want to use that battery for my rehab projects job sites camping trips so i have a lot of other uses for it but i also want it to be that power source for me if the power goes off and i need the sump pump to run and for those that might need a little bit more help around the house or just want to engage in the diy conversation i did just open up a patreon for everyday home repairs it has two different tier levels and actually if you join the higher tier level there's five additional spots right now where it comes with a 30 minute zoom call and we can dive into any topic or project you want around your house i'd be happy to talk to you about that so you'll see the link of that in the description now since we've been talking about some pumps a really close topic to that is making sure your downspouts are routed correctly and taking rain water away from your foundation so check out this video right here and it'll give you the kind of good better best solution for making sure the water is not just dumping off your roof down your downspout and to your foundation so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 203,657

Keywords: zoeller sump pump installation, zoeller m98 sump pump, everyday home repairs, DIY, failed sump pump

Id: 9b7SyekmhqI

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022