Test Your Sump Pump or Risk a Flood

Test Your Sump Pump or Risk a Flood

Test Your Sump Pump or Risk a Flood. Spring thaw, April showers on their way, you can easily forget about something as important as your sump pump.Shawn Chesney Home Inspections wants to remind you how important it is to make sure your sump pump is in good working order.

You should never Forget to check your sump pump! You could end up just like the homeowner who returned from a weekend trip to discover his entire basement floor covered in three feet of water. Once he safely shut down the power, he waded over to the sump pump and noticed it hadn’t and wasn’t working. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the cable attached to the float must have gotten tangled somehow. He took merely two seconds to untangle the cable, and then he spent the next 15 hours dragging out waterlogged carpet, running the wet/dry vac and moving fans around before beginning to calculate how many thousands of dollars damage had been caused and what ordeal he would have to face with his Insurance Company.

To avoid a similar disaster, We recommend that you be sure that your pump has a vertical float switch. You will also want to check your pump at least a couple times a year by dumping water into the basin to make sure everything is working properly. Make sure your plugs have not been disconnected to temporarily plug in another device and then forgotten about.

Recommendations

Sump Pumps are expected to last anywhere from 3 to 7 years on average. We also recommend the installation of a sump pump system to help insure operation when needed most is vital. Examples of these are battery backup equipped sump pumps or water powered sump pumps. Even the addition of a second sump pump with the float set at a little higher level can help. Then if one pump fails, you have a second to help protect your home.

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