yay, the septic pump died

[Koffer]

Cleaned the house all last week , ready for the appraisal dude to show this morning for the refi .
Woke this morning at 4am and heard a buzzing sound stumbled around to find out WTF and could hear it coming from the basement. go down and find the alarm for the pump tank was sounding . Fxxxing Great , not going to mess with that till its light out and go and lye in bed till the sun comes up .
Suns up so back to the basement, Breaker on , check , out to the box that the connections are in and take off the cover ,check voltage , good , pull the plug out and make sure they are clean , all good but notice the plug is piggybacked onto another plug , its the float , unplug float and plug in the pump , YES the pump is good but looks like the float might be bad or stuck .
Nothing more i want to do then have to pull the cover off and play in that fun today.

Mostly a venting post here till the into the "s***" then will come the ?????s

 

[Spook50]

s***ty thing to wake up to.



Oh come on someone was bound to do it.....

 

[splitshot]

Bummer.
If it turns out to be a saturated leach field I Highly recommend going Infiltrator and hope there is room for a new field.

 

[WarDamnEagle]

We bought a new house almost 2 years ago with a tank and discharge pump; my first ever after a half dozen or so houses. The guy that did the inspection for me is a friend and he advised to keep tampons, dental floss, and anything with a string out of the toilets as they will catch on the float. Hopefully it's nothing more than that when you break into it.

Good luck

 

[toy4xfun]

back in 1997 i worked in the Ronald Reagan building in DC, one weekend the sewage ejection pump went bad, that Moday morning the p-3 level had S--- half way up the walls. they also had 18" raised floors in all the office areas.

 

[Koffer]

I think it may have been a sticky float , When I bypassed it the pump worked fine , put it all back together and waiting for it to refill . I have 2 tanks a 1500gal septic tank and a 1000 gal pump tank 15 feet away from it. The pump then shoots it out to the field about 80 feet away .
I have enough room in the tank if the alarm goes off I have a about 1/3 of the tank still useable before the s*** hits the lawn Jed Clampet style

If the field is shot in under 6 years old I'll be uber pissed as its just me and the Cruiser
were super careful of what heads down the drain (no garbage disposal, "white mice" or chemicals) and hell my time to "drop the kids off at the pool " ends up mostly during work hours.
$30k+ for it , It better last a good long while

 

[KLF]

Those floats fail pretty often, usually more often then the pump. The wire fatigues right at the float and breaks inside. That's one of the reasons why they are plug in like that, no wiring to mess with in the boxes.

When you zip-tie the new float wire to the riser pipe, try to put it on so the wire is perpendicular to the pipe, not parallel. Less bending of the wire, it will last longer.

A buddy had his fail a couple of years ago, it was Christmas morning, house full of guests.

 

[splitshot]

One of the worst requirements IMO, was to plumb the gray water into the tank. Some local codes are becoming more lenient to water the landscape.

If all else fails........Hire this guy.

 

[Koffer]

Those floats fail pretty often, usually more often then the pump. The wire fatigues right at the float and breaks inside. That's one of the reasons why they are plug in like that, no wiring to mess with in the boxes.

When you zip-tie the new float wire to the riser pipe, try to put it on so the wire is perpendicular to the pipe, not parallel. Less bending of the wire, it will last longer.

A buddy had his fail a couple of years ago, it was Christmas morning, house full of guests.

Yeah the floats shot alarm was going off again , now on to how do I set it up ?

I'm hoping I can use the old one as a guide to get the right min/max setting . I'm not looking for having to revisit this issue once its done .
I looked thru all the stuff I have from when it was designed and installed but non of it gets into that part of the system
Google has let me down on my end (I think part of it is the moron working the keyboard )Any ideas ?

 

[titanpat57]

If you get stuck...call me at work tomorrow, I can make a call or two to some vendors I use.


(I'll PM you the number if you need it)

 

[Toyo FJ40]

Give Finkle's a call. They should have one in stock. The float is probably wire tied to the pipe. There should be a union or furnco fitting holding the pumped line to the tank wall that you can disconnect and pull the whole assembly out and swap out the float. Like you said just put it at the same height and same length of wire to the float any it should work the same.

 

[Koffer]

Give Finkle's a call. They should have one in stock. The float is probably wire tied to the pipe. There should be a union or furnco fitting holding the pumped line to the tank wall that you can disconnect and pull the whole assembly out and swap out the float. Like you said just put it at the same height and same length of wire to the float any it should work the same.

I picked it up at Finkle's a couple of days ago ( you been talking to my wife as she said the same thing that morning ) Best place ever

Its this Saturdays morning project , just hoping the tie-wraps didn't break loose and its just been floating around in the tank .

 

[Toyo FJ40]

I picked it up at Finkle's a couple of days ago ( you been talking to my wife as she said the same thing that morning ) Best place ever

Its this Saturdays morning project , just hoping the tie-wraps didn't break loose and its just been floating around in the tank .

Just plug in the pump and pump it down till you can see where the float is connected to the pipe, you should be able to see if it's still attached. If it did break free it might just need reattaching (you should see the float at the surface if it broke free)

 

[KLF]

You want it to pump the chamber down to about 3-4" of fluid remaining, no less, 6" might be even better depending on the type of pump. If it's a Goulds you might want to leave it a 6" minimum depth, they tend to run big. If you try to go too far it will suck air and that will ruin the pump, besides the pump motor relies on the liquid in the tank to keep the motor cool.

It may be on the plan how much ease dose is designed for, I usually go for about a 100 gallon dose. A few longer run times is better than a bunch of short runs.

 

[Koffer]

And now let the fun begin

 

[Koffer]

OK
I hit the 1st issue . Got the cover off , but there is some kind of 90 deg metal elbow on it , that looks like it comes apart but it too low to see how ? Any ideas ? Its not a union joint or a furnco fitting as that would be too easy

 

[KLF]

A picture or 2 would really help.

I assume the 90 deg elbow is on the pump discharge pipe, which is common. There should be a check valve below that. If you are only replacing the float switch, you don't need to mess with taking that pipe apart. Unplug the float, plug the pump directly into the receptacle, force the pump to run, get as much fluid out of there as you can. You may be able to do this from the panel in your house as well.

 

[Koffer]

Got it apart , I dont feel the pump is long for the world as I went to grab it by the handle and it pulled off and the cord dosnt feel good under the jacket , (lumpy) . I really dont think it was set up right as the pump top half hangs out of the water it seems most of the time .
The float I removed had 2 , (min/max???) Both had water sloshing around in them . The one I put in is a single unit , better then nothing

Heres some pixs of the fitting , once I figured out how it was set up its pretty easy to remove (has a long PVCpipe at the top with a T to left out the whole unit ) just heavy as hell
What kind of fitting is that ?
"UPDATE" Toyo FJ40 Has let me know its called a "pitless adapter" , thanks Kevin

 

[Koffer]

some more , cant figure out why I cant rotate the pixs as they show up right but when I post them they don't
This is what happens when you use a Iphone to take pixs (wife couldnt find the reg camera)

 

[Toyo FJ40]

That looks like a Hydromatic ejector pump. They're a good pump but if you think there's a problem with the electric line Finkle's stock Hydromatics ( for @ $400)

Looks like it's been running warm by the amount of poo baked on.