Sump pumps are one of the most boring parts of home ownership. Until that one storm comes and suddenly they’re interesting.

After losing power one time this summer, I got paranoid and decided to build a battery backup. Home Depot had the basement watchdog systems, but they seemed high maintenance and I wanted something that would let me be lazier. I went with a LifePo4 battery system, that will (hopefully) get me 10 to 15 years. The battery charger has a float/storage mode so it can stay on 24/7. Doing some test runs, I think I can get about 400 cycles out of the battery before it hits 0%. I added some additional safety features (DC circuit breaker, GFCI with auto-on, Lithium fire extinguiser, etc), and added some battery powered lights and a basket of hand tools, so in the event the power goes out in the dead of night, something goes wrong, and I have to get my feet wet, everything is there ready to go.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
    7·
    10 days ago

    When I was a kid, our sump pump was like the #1 thing that would get fried in a thunderstorm. Our power would go out every fucking time it rained. We’d sit there in the dark watching the outlets arc.

    • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      4·
      10 days ago

      Yup, it’s hard to see in the photo, but at the wall power I put a Southwire #41008.

      It has a high joule rating, but the nice thing is that if a surge occurs and it fries the 41008, it cuts off power (i.e. system goes to battery) and it sounds an alarm like a smoke detector. So then you go down and either replace it or remove it to get wall power again.

      I do know that surge protection in front of a pump is a highly debated topic among electricians, so YMMV

        • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
          2·
          10 days ago

          It’s a tradeoff. You can “raw dog” the wall outlet, and hope that a surge doesn’t fry your shit.

          I have a little widget that absorbs electricity and basically kills itself and sounds an alarm if there’s a significant surge in a thunderstorm. The tradeoff is that I have to resolve the situation by either swapping in a new, unkilled widget or remove the dead one and plug everything directly into the wall, before the battery back up runs out of power.