Backup Sump Pump Solutions
Protect Your Basement and Mechanicals
Battery Backup Sump Pumps
When you live in an area that is prone to power outages, a battery backup is a great insurance policy. While backup systems don’t give you a forever lifeline, they provide 6-8 hours of runtime or 18 – 36 hours of backup (if running sporadically). Additionally, when installed, a battery backup system is situated higher in the pit and will provide additional pump power if your pit is getting overwhelmed in a storm. The average sump pump moves between 2000 and 3000 gallons of water per hour. A battery backup pump will move an additional 1000 gallons/hour.
If you live in a home with municipal water, you can install a water powered backup pump. These siphon pumps are powered by the water pressure provided to your home. While installation of these pumps is a little more expensive, they tend to last a very long time and have few mechanical parts to give you problems in the future. While the water powered backup pumps provide a similar 1000 gal/hour of pump power to the battery backup units, they will run so long as the township has water pressure. If you are in an area that has trouble with electric power often, or just want the peace of mind knowing that if you are not home, you will always have a layer of protection, this is the backup solution for you. In situations where your home sits on an extremely high water table, we sometimes install these as a third pump. This is rare, but sometimes when you have a high end basement finishes, and just don’t want to take chances, a backup to the backup is required.
When you have a situation where you have a pump that runs infrequently, you don’t get a lot of water in the well, but there is always the off chance it could flood, a power inverter may be the right solution. It is simply a high end power strip with a trickle charger and a power inverter to charge a battery, or two, so if power is interrupted, your standard pump will operate from battery power.
While this isn’t a true backup, it will provide you with 6-8 hours of power to run your pump without electricity. If for some reason the pump were to fail, you would still have that single point of failure. This is generally a good solution when installing a new, quality pump.