The Problem That’s Never Solved

I bet you thought you’d heard the last of the basement flooding saga. If you thought so, you’d be wrong. When we got home from vacation, Cal had the presence of mind to check the basement. Instead of a nice, dry concrete floor, we found six inches of water. The sump pump failed.

At 2:30 in the morning Cal was playing with the pump, trying to jerry-rig it to drain the water. Thankfully, the heater was still working—it shouldn’t have been.

Cal got the pump running, and we got to bed sometime after 3am. The next day he called the plumbing “experts.” They eventually came out. They proclaimed the pit too shallow. I assumed that would mean they’d make the pit deeper. No. Instead they put on a different float-switch. It worked...for two or three days. Now we have the opposite problem. The pump runs and runs and runs until it overheats and the fail safe thermocouple thingy turns it off. Then it cools, and guess what? Yep, it starts pumping again until it overheats. We called the super-duper plumbing guys again. They’re coming again to see what can be done. I’d assume they’re going to dig a deeper pit, but I’ve been wrong before.

I’ll let you know how it goes.