PLUMBING!!! I HATE PLUMBING..............
Plumbing: Holy crap, what a nightmare yesterday was! I got to my daughter's house at 2 PM, (they had been out all day) and her husband was right, one of the three sump pumps was making a horrible noise, like it had a hand full of rocks in the impeller. However, before I can relate this story, you need some background. Nobody on that road has a real cellar under their house, especially up where I built my house, due to ground water. There is a Spring that pours out across the beach at the bottom of the road and all that comes from a bed of fine sand that lays under a shallow hardpan. When I had my full cellar dug, I asked for a large sump hole - (it ended up being 24" in diameter and over 3-feet deep). . . . Knowing that water intrusion would be my biggest problem, I bought three pumps, two 1/3-HP submersibles and a 1,000 GPM 12 VDC bilge pump for emergencies when the power failed. All three pumps are discharged into the same 1-1/2" line that runs underground out to a road catchment basin. The two main (120 VAC) pumps that I originally installed lasted 19 years and were replaced by a company my daughter hired when one of them quit, (Just back on March 18, 2015!!! Mind you.)
So we disconnected everything and lifted the pump assembly out of the sump. We quickly determined that the 'quiet' pump was dead! The bearings were so shot the impeller was loose inside the pump housing. The noisy pump was right behind it, but it was obvious we needed to put the assembly back into the sump and pump water before the cellar flooded. This is the worse time of year due to high levels of ground water. When we tried to start the one functioning pump, IT failed!! Due to the way the three-legged "Y" was assembled, we could not disconnect the two main pumps and ended up hauling a-s-s to H.D. for an old fashioned stand-up sump pump. We bought their last 1/2 HP, 4,500 GPH pump and took the Turn Pike back to the house as my daughter had texted her husband asking us to hurry as she was now bailing water out of the sump with a 5 gallon bucket! We got there and did some quick plumbing work in order to just get the pump in the water and running. It started up, but it made a funny noise I didn't like and once we stopped it, it wouldn't start again!! We pulled it up and discovered that the impeller was hitting the top of the pump housing. By messing with it, I found the upper of two Allen screws in the shaft coupling was loose, so I forced the shaft down and retightened the Allen screws. Then it ran quietly and started every time.. After a few plumbing refinements we finally got the height correct so the float would work properly and I left their house five hours after arriving!
I HATE Plumbing!!!
Roger
