My basement flooded at 3 AM, learned a hard lesson about sump pumps

I woke up last Tuesday to water gushing through my basement wall in Cleveland. The sump pump failed because the outlet it was plugged into tripped a GFCI breaker. I spent $600 on a backup battery pump the next day and now I check that outlet every month. Anyone else had a pump fail in the middle of the night?

2 comments

2 Comments

skylercooper17d ago

Man, that's brutal timing waking up at 3 AM to water. So here's what I'm wondering - did you ever figure out why that GFCI outlet tripped in the first place? Because that's the part that would keep me up at night even after I got the backup pump installed. A tripped GFCI usually means there's some moisture or a short somewhere in the circuit, and your sump pump is sitting right in a damp environment. If it's just a random one-time thing, great, but if that outlet keeps tripping you've got a bigger electrical problem hiding in the walls. I'd be paranoid about checking that outlet every single month too, but honestly I'd probably just replace the whole GFCI after that scare.

gavins4317d ago

Friend of mine had that exact issue, turned out a small crack in the pump housing was misting water onto the outlet.