Sump Pump Slump

Last night, lying in bed, Melissa asked if I had left the downstairs fan on or something. She thought she heard some kind of motor running. I ignored it and went back to sleep. This morning I heard her yell something from the basement. I went downstairs and saw the sump pump well overflowing as the pump ran. It smelled like it had been running for a while.

We assumed, after demoing a concrete floor with porcelain tile above the sump pump, we had gotten the sump pump well filled with so much debris it had clogged. Melissa had pointed this out earlier and we attempted to clean it but apparently we didn't clean it well enough.

Anyway, after several minutes of unsuccessful unclogging with my hand, we manually drained the well and attempted to remove the sump pump to examine it. I began unscrewing plumbing to get the thing free. Like a fool, I unscrewed a one-way flow valve that had been put there to prevent sewage from backing up into our basement. At first it looked like clean water, but after 2 or 3 seconds it turned brown and smelled like the worst sewage. I stood there with the stuff pouring all over my arm and leg as we started yelling at each other wondering what I had just unleashed. Somewhere during this chaos I revealed that I had just taken a crap upstairs and that maybe it was now draining out all over me. After several agonizing seconds of screwing the valve back the disgusting water finally stopped flowing. Damn that was gross. After repeated washings I can still smell the stuff on my hands.

Later, I just cut the PVC pipe below the valve and was able to remove the sump pump. Melissa's standard technique seemed to work. We just took the thing apart, put it back together, tested it in a bucket...and it started working again. I guess we had dislodged some piece of debris. We put the whole thing back in its place, connected the cut pipes with a boot, and did a final test with more water to ensure it was still working.


If you ever demo something above your sump pump, make sure you cover the sump pump so debris does not put your sump pump in a slump.