The sump pump in my 1950's house here in Ohio is not submersible. Which means, every time it kicks on, you hear a loud RRRRRRRR coming from the cellar that lasts about 20 seconds.

It's always fun in the summer time, if you didn't turn the garden hose off all the way when you were watering your garden the previous afternoon, and the water's slowly leaking out, you'll be awakened at 3 am by the RRRRRRR blasting you out of a sound sleep telling you You left the hose on outside, idiot! And you must venture outside in your jammmies and turn it off, if you don't want to hear the RRRRRRR every hour or so the rest of the night!

I often think of "All in the Family" episodes, when you heard the toilet flush upstairs and you knew where Archie was. In our house, it's not the flush, it's the sump pump that announces where you've just been.

Have a good one!

and we had a sump pump. Damn thing jammed and burned itself up. I hated going into the crawl to try to get it working. Awful house.

and it's a good thing we did! The 23" of snow in Wisconsin last week (some got 30&quot is almost all melted and the new pump is spewing water all over the side yard, across the sidewalk and into the street! We dodged a bullet, we are sure of it. It will be in the 70's next week Monday and Tuesday. Midwest "roller coaster" Spring weather! Tornado season has started too. Definitely not boring.

And under all of that snow, my Daffodils are up 3". Sump pumps running and Daffodils! Spring is here!

I saw a ServiceMaster van at a house up the street yesterday. Uff da!

I'd install that second sump pump just above the first one, but my experience is exclusively with bilge pumps so what do I know.

Actually, once the pump's not running any more, later in the spring, I'm going to install the new one and keep the old one for emergencies.

I'd never even heard of them until my parents had one installed in their basement (in the suburbs, on clay soil). I don't have one, and my 130-year-old basement doesn't leak. It depends a lot on the soil composition. If there's a lot of clay in it, especially below the surface soil, the water won't absorb as well and is more likely to seep along a foundation. The soil in my area is sandy loam, which is highly absorbent, and in the nearly 30 years I've lived in this house the basement has never leaked (it's just musty and full of spiders). As far as I know, nobody in my neighborhood of 90+ year-old houses has one. I think they are more common in newer construction.

It's essential here. I don't mind really.

It's interesting how different patches of soil types are scattered around the area. My parents' old house in a suburb north of St. Paul was situated on soil with a lot of clay, and that sump pump ran almost all the time in the spring and summer. You've probably had to amend your soil a bit if you grow vegetables.

Ha ha! I couldn't resist!! Take care and thanks for the story.

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We didn't need to get a battery backup unit, as the drain system could hold 4 hours of torrential rain before cresting.

However, we did have the primary pump fail twice, and the secondary one would kick in. There was also a water sensor tied to our home alarm system, that would send out calls to our call list, in the event that we were unreachable. I also installed a dry well, 50 feet away from one side of the house that had chronic pooling of water from direct rain and from the downspouts. What led up to this was that the single sump pump failed at 9PM on a Friday. Luckily, there was a 24-hour Wal*Mart 20 miles away that sold the same brand sump pumps we used. On top of that, I bought a portable sump pump that I threw down into the sump well to get by the night, one that was connected to a garden hose.

I definitely recommend a French drain system, if one can not redirect water from their roof far enough away from the house. There is also a lot of underground seepage that could occur. My brother's house was remediated, but he was still getting water even during dry spells. He was in a slightly elevated area, well above streams, so it was odd. After two years of research and investigation, it turned out that a water main or drainage pipe was leaking about 1/2 mile away from him, which was slightly higher in elevation than his house.

My current house has a layer of marl clay about 6 inches down, which neighboring homes removed so they can have low-maintenance lawns. It sucks that during dry spells, the lawn needs watering or it gets burned, but at the same time, the clay barrier prevents water from penetrating down into the ground near my foundation. I'm the only one with a dry basement.

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Never could see why they don't in Oklahoma and other tornado states

The water has a much easier route to the river at the end of the street than through our cellar, so we have no need of a sump. There is a drain, just in case.

that stuck in my mind (pumps triggered the memory) of all places, Joplin MO where the EF5 damaged quite a bit of the town and killed so many. I know some blamed the lack of those paying attention to the sirens (they went off quite a bit in Joplin every spring), but I do recall that the bedrock was so close to the surface that basements were pretty well non-existent. We did have a crawl space (and we used it too, when we had several tornado events), but not the same as a full-fledged basement.

I haven't been back to Joplin in some time, I'd like to go, but kind of hesitate, being that a couple of my high school associates / friends got killed (they stayed in Joplin while I moved elsewhere for my job), and my old high school (now Joplin High School, was Parkland High before) got destroyed. Kind of a weird high school memory to have.

At some point someone covered the cellar floor in cement - a good thing. Unfortunately, they neglected the drain and we had to find the outlet amongst the bushes and trees on the hillside and ream it out. My husband finally figured out a way to avoid basement flooding during heavy rains and the spring thaw. He built a raised barrier of concrete about 4 inches in from the stone wall. The water comes in and it flows right back out along his channel. Wish it worked for the squirrels and chipmunks that get in. LOL.