Testing a Sump Pump for Dummies

Sump pump diagram

It's said that water is a homeowner's worst enemy. A home's plumbing, a black box second only to electricity in the mysteriousness department, keeps the water that occupants use at bay, but what happens to all the water falling from the sky: rain, snow, sleet or hail? Roofs and gutters do most of the work, but if the house has a basement or the foundation is below grade, the house probably has a sump pump, too. These nearly invisible, yet vital, tools provide decades of reliable service; but they can, and do, occasionally fail (we know this from experience, of course). The wise homeowner occasionally tests the pump during the dry season to make certain it will still work when the rains come. Since he (or she) is wise, however, he's not going to take advice from Cecilia Harsch at SFGate.com, and definitely not from the article she published for them called "How to Test a Sump Pump."

Cecilia's lack of qualification for writing this article is evident from the first paragraph, where she defined a sump pump:

"Sump pumps are often installed in a crawlspace or basement below the floor to defend your home against a flood or accumulating ground water. A sump pump also removes collected condensation created by your air conditioner and water from areaway drains, preventing moisture from collecting around the foundation of your home or in the floor of your basement."

We aren't sure how a sump pump would protect against a flood... and we think Cecilia downplayed the most important function of a sump pump, the removal of groundwater piped into the sump pit by the foundation drainage system. Were Harsch at least a little familiar with the pumps, she might have made this point – she didn't. Cecilia went on to discuss testing the pump. First, she said to, "Find the outside pipe that catches the water as it drains from the pump..." Huh? "catches" the water? Perhaps she meant drains the water. For what it's worth, a lot of homeowners will never find that "outside pipe" because their sump pumps drain into the public sewer or storm sewer system. They'll have fun looking, though... Harsch then instructed her readers to

"Trace the two electrical cords from the sump pump to the electrical outlet. The pump cord plugs into the back of the float cord plug. Pull the plugs from the outlet, pull the plugs apart, and plug the pump cord only back into the outlet. You should hear the pump running."

Interesting: the sump pump at Antisocial Network HQ has only one plug (see  picture): how do we perform this test? Once again, Cecilia's unfamiliarity with sump pumps means her "advice" was useless, because not all pumps have this power-supply configuration. When she did get to the actual test, the one anyone can perform, Cecilia told readers to

"Remove the lid from the sump crock. Slowly pour some water from a 5-gallon bucket into the crock. Observe the sump pump switch. It should turn on and begin to pump water from the crock."

"Observe the... switch"? No, dumbass, observe the float and/or the water level! you'll definitely know when the pump switches on: you'll hear it. The test is to observe whether or not the addition of water to the sump automatically switches the pump on. Sheesh...

According to her bio, Harsch apparently lives in the Dallas area, and our Texas expert points out that homes in the state are almost always built on slabs and rarely have sump pumps – no basements, in other words. Perhaps SFGate should have found someone who'd actually seen a sump pump once or twice write this article... but no, they paid our Dumbass of the Day for a job not well done. Nice going, Demand Media...

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