Need Advice sump switch died - going to add a battery backup

Luckily I noticed the diaphragm switch being bad when we hosed down the walk up steps on the basement and the sump did not come on. Also lucky we discovered 15 min before the hardware store closed last weekend before the rain.

I figured as long as I had it tore open I'd add the backup.

Has anyone had good luck with certain brands? I was considering a Wayne ESP25 from online reviews, or possibly something water powered. Although the water powered would not do any good when turning off the water for vacations.

 

My work buddy wanted a backup system and we made one with a charger/inverter and some costco deep cycle batteries.

I think it was similar to this model: http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtSeriesID=818&txtModelID=2938

 

Man that ought to do it...not inexpensive though. And I'm not sure I want the batteries in the house, could run wires...

As an aside I tried to get an idea last night how many times the sump filled/emptied, about 5 times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OtQPtm6icE&feature=youtu.be

Still pondering, may design something myself as I want notifications of failures etc.

Thinking of 3 levels: main sump, backup and about to overflow email notification. The overflow I've meant to do anyway as there is a cool device that can take a few sensors so I could put one on the washer and water heater too.

 

I would look into a water powered backup (don't laugh .. google it). Very safe and you very rarely ever lose water pressure. Battery backup doesn't help you if you have a pump failure. The water powered backup is a separate system and requires zero maintenance.

 

We installed water powered sump pump about 4 years ago. I was worried about losing electricity and losing sump pump during a summer storm. I explored battery backup but it has limited functionality due to how much power it can store.
If you have extended power outage, your battery backup will not help you out.

Therefore, we installed water powered sump pump. Water powered sump pump trigger point is higher than the main sump pump so it will only kick in if main out fails. ( You can test it every season by unplugging the main sump pump and see if water powered sump pump kicks in ) It uses your house water pressure to pump water out. I believe it uses 1 gallon of water to pump out 2. Now if I have long period of power outage that I'm using water powered sump pump, I might use lots of water ( higher water bill ) but no water damage to worry about.

We got it installed by Wacker Plumber for around $400 if I remember correctly. Hope this helps.
.

 

I appreciate the suggestions. The trouble with water for us is vacations we turn the water off. And would still have a mechanical switch, which I want to get away from on one of the units.

Right now I'm thinking I'd definitely like to have a second pump.

I've been making some calculations and measurements, based on the last storm and some data online for rainfall.

A UPS should be able to run through any worst case storm, according to my very rough calcs at least. The calcs do match what I observed last night in terms of the number of times the pump ran. Setting max rainfall to 5in and assuming main pump failure we would get ~22 discharges, or a total duration of the sump on of 3.6min. This seems well within the capability of the UPS, as long as it can deal with the startup current of the motor.

If that works I'll add a second pump, with the UPS. Picked up a 1350VA unit at Costco today for $90 - we'll see how this works. If it works out OK I'll use that to power the backup sump.

The other thing the calcs make clear, is that with a walk up basement (which dumps into the sump) if the sump or switch fails the sump pit will definitely overflow.

 

Update

Tried the 1350VA with the 1/3 HP sump. Had a 25A analog meter in series. Peak startup was 15A, ~8A running. Cyberpower 1350VA ran it, although the overload light came on.

Since the panel display on the UPS is somewhat delayed, it is unclear if the overload is due to the startup current or running current. Although I suspect may be the running current, since I did a ~20 sec run and the overload indicator stayed on.

Ran for 10 cycles though just fine - although this may be somewhat abusive to the UPS.

This would even bottom out the big tripplite mentioned earlier. Eventual configuration being considered is trying with a 1/4 HP superior brand sump (as the backup), to keep the current down a little.

The other thing I found interesting is that the sump does come on even without rain. This is because the AC condensate drains into the sump.

 

Do you know what the model of the water powered sump pump is that you had installed?