It started with a noise I didn’t hear. The sump pump in the bathroom in my basement has a particular noise as it cycles and pumps water out of the sump hole. I was using the bathroom – and reading a really good book – when I noted that the pump hadn’t run in the time I was down there. When I was done with my task and at a good stopping point in my book, I investigated.<\/p>\n
Which was no small feat even by itself. The former owners had covered over the sump pump area with a decorative outdoor lattice – and about a billion screws. Okay, maybe a million. I got all the screws removed, removed the lattice, and removed the sump cover.<\/p>\n
Full of water.<\/p>\n
And because I’m a geek, I first tried unplugging it and plugging it back in. Just in case. No luck, though, the pump was dead. I unplugged it for the last time with a heavy heart – this wasn’t how I wanted to spend my Sunday.<\/p>\n
I rolled up my sleeves, got a bucket and a red solo cup and started bailing. Bucket after bucket of some really suspect water came out of that hole and all the while I’m seriously thinking:<\/p>\n
“Okay, this is just about the time in a horror movie when something intensely horrible is going to come slithering out of the filthy water, grab a hold of me, and pull me down to a watery grave.”<\/p>\n
So, as a precaution, I had them keep a transporter lock on me at all times. The first sign of trouble and I was ready to beam my ass right on out of there.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, the bathroom is well lit, the hole wasn’t that deep, and it was still daytime outside. I managed to work my way steadily down to the inflow pipe and see what I was up against.<\/p>\n
The old sump pump was corroded and the inflow to the pump was clogged. I noticed the water was warm too – I’m guessing the pump had overheated when it got clogged.<\/p>\n
I sent my Dad a text:<\/p>\n
[non-flood sump pump problem. Please call and advise]<\/p>\n
He called me a little later and we talked a little about what I was up against. I’ve inherited my Dad’s dislike of plumbing, but he had some good suggestions and I had a plan.<\/p>\n
With the sump now slowly refilling with water and the model number in hand, I headed to Home Depot. I found the section, found the brand, found the model number… and the shelf was empty. I swore, then found a cashier and had them call for help. The staff person that answered the call scanned the barcode on the shelf and announced that they had 39(!) in stock. He got a ladder, found the pump, and in no time I was on my way.<\/p>\n
After a few more errands, I headed back home and bailed out the sump again. The next step was to remove the old pump. Except that it wouldn’t budge. At all. I even borrowed a wrench from the neighbors with a smaller handle and was pretty much in the sump hole trying to get it loose.<\/p>\n
No luck.<\/p>\n
So, plan B. (oh, at this point it should be noted that the help videos online for the pump were crap).<\/p>\n
I would need to find a rubber connector, cut the pipe to get part of the pipe and the old pump out, then hopefully remove the pipe from the pump and install the new one.<\/p>\n
But it was getting late and home depot was closed. I now had a slowly filling sump hole and no way to get the rest of the parts I needed.<\/p>\n
A sense of doom settled over me and I prepared for the long night ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It started with a noise I didn’t hear. The sump pump in the bathroom in my basement has a particular noise as it cycles and pumps water out of the sump hole. I was using the bathroom – and reading a really good book – when I noted that the pump hadn’t run in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1381,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions\/1381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}