Home Moanership XVI Solution/Resolution

2024-03-17 (updated 2024-03-19)

There will be no more flooding in the basement. The plumbing service has come and gone and taken steps.

1. The dead sump pump has been replaced with a 1/2 horsepower submersible pump with level controller, the discharge of which is no longer tied into the house sewage lines. Instead, the effluent of the sump, being groundwater, is pumped outside. At some future date, we will probably line the drain path with pea-gravel.

2. The washer no longer discharges to the deep sinks. Instead, it discharges to a tank with an injector pump (and backup) that used the old tee connection to the sewage line that the sump pump no longer uses.

3. There was a side defect. When the basement dehumidifier runs, it produces a steady trickle of water from the air. It used to drip into the deep sink and result in a nasty slime. Then I diverted it to a bucket of sorts. To empty the bucket a less lazy man than I could have carried it out the basement door and dumped it into the sump with its new sump-pump.

4. Lazy men crave better solutions and resolutions. I have an aquarium-size submersible pump and fifteen feet of plastic tubing, so I resolved to pump the bucket into the ejector-pump sump that the washing machine now drains into. Alas, the little pump has low head (that means it can’t lift the water very high at all) and serves as the initiator of a siphon effect, or would if it were just a bit higher. But the condensation bucket still has to be lower than the dehumidifier, so…

I bought another wire shelf unit. The dehumidifier had been sitting atop a microwave cart – now it sits on the top shelf of a taller rolling shelving unit. The bucket it drains into sits on the shelf below it, which is higher than the drain it is tubed to. I have run the pump once as a proof of concept, and it drained the bucket in less than a minute and continued the siphon effect even after I unplugged the pump.

All the shelves are in use, I reclaimed a microwave cart for the Owner’s Suite, and everyone is happy with the Not Flooding. What could possibly go wrong?

The dehumidifier had not cycled on since the move to the taller shelf. The readout says “E6” which I mis-read as "36". It’s set to maintain 45% or less relative humidity, so that seemed right. But it ran nearly continuously when it resided just a bit lower. This bore further inguesstigation.

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You should note that the top shelf in the picture above is somewhat lower than the posts would allow. That's because when I assembled the shelving, I used the highest position. I did not put the dehumidifier in its square bucket as now shown. It does not work that way, hence the error code. I necessarily lowered the shelf, added the bucket as shown and voila! It works again. As well, the little pump in the bucket initiates flow and siphon takes over. All is well at last.

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2024-03-19 - The aquarium submersible pump has died for no apparent reason. A replacement will arrive later today.