Fun With Plumbing

Earlier this week I was awakened at the unbearable hour of 4:30 after only making it to bed at about 2:30. What could possible wake someone at 4:30, you might ask. After all it the hour from 4-5 that is the one hour that both morning people and night owls are generally asleep, who could possibly be awake to wake you up? And, dear reader, I would laugh at you for thinking it might be a person. Indeed, no, it was my sump pump. See I live about 20 feet from the blasted thing, and the “wall” between me and it is really just a series of cabinets, open at the top, and with a hole for a “door”. It is, therefore, not exactly sound deadening, and the sump pump was making the loudest grinding noise EVER. My basement leaks with uncomfortable regularity, so I was afraid to unplug it as the weather has been warming and we just had a fairly major blizzard. Also, it was 4:30AM, I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. I went back to bed and put a pillow over my head, trying to get some sleep before I had to go to work in the morning. At 7:10 my mom came downstairs and unplugged it, and I finally fell back asleep (for the less than an hour before my alarm went off anyway). My mom was going to rinse it out, and hope for the best (this has worked in the past, we get a lot of silt that clogs up the sump pump). That was five days ago. She finally rinsed it out today, but alas, nothing happened. Actually, something did happen, the ground fault just turned off. So we headed out to Home Depot to buy a new one, and also to see my SIL. An hour and a half later, our new sump pump is installed and it’s super quiet. Except it might not work. See, it runs, it’s clearly TRYING to work, but the bit of water remaining in the nasty basement hole merely appears to be stirring, not sucked up into the pipe and sent away from the house. One of three things is happening (we hope). Either there is ice stuck in the piping which will need to be removed, but which we can fix; or there is not enough water in the hole for the sump pump to suck anything up, but there is enough for it to think it should work, which we can fix; or the darned thing is not installed correctly/broken, which since my mom has installed a new sump pump every year since my dad died, I think means it’s broken. Fudge!
Also, in case you read my blog, but not Sarah’s, she has a shiny new baby girl named Naomi, whom I have not yet met in person, but looks adorable in pictures. You should probably go check those out on her blog.