the blog at eric moon dot net

Do you have any idea what a sewage ejector pump is?  Chances are, unless you live on a steep hill, or have a bathroom in your basement, or are a plumber, you don’t. And just a few months ago, I was also blissfully ignorant of such a contraption as well.  However, buying a house on a steep hill with a bathroom in the basement gave me a chance to expand my knowledge.

The whole saga began about 4 months ago.  In the midst of one of the hottest and driest summers on record, in the throes of a multi-year drought, most of our yard look brown and crispy.  There was, however, an oasis of green in this desert wasteland.  Strangely enough, it was surrounding a PVC pipe that was sticking out of the ground.  Upon further inspection, there were also some wires that came out of the ground as well and plugged into an outdoor outlet.  With a bunch of other household stuff, not to mention Ironman training, to occupy my attention, I actively ignored the oddity of it all… until…

Walking through this green patch one day, my foot sank about 2 inches into the dirt.  This wasn’t just a patch of green grass, it was a swamp!  Since I had no idea what was down there (broken pipe, maybe?) I grabbed a shove and started digging.  Eventually I uncovered a circular piece of  plastic with a couple of PVC pipes and those electric cords protruding.

At this point, I had done my typical internet research to figure out that what I was dealing with is a sewage ejector pump, or often just called a sewage pump.  It’s used when there is a need to pump sewage up from a low area to the main drain pipe of the house.   It sits inside a large cylindrical tank.  Once the tank fills up to a certain level with raw sewage, a float switch trips and whoosh it all gets pumped up to the main sewer line.

In our case, this meant the washing machine and the full bath in the basement all emptied into ‘the pit’ as I came to call the holding tank.  And in our case, the pump wasn’t working, so we never got the whoosh.  It just kept filling up further and further until… swamp.

Post-excavation of the pit, I was able to detach all of the PVC pipes.  First bit of education – that those bigger ridged PVC parts that the little pieces fit into are PVC unions and are there to make it simple to disconnect pipes.  Too bad I learned it bending and twisting and contorting one of the pipes until it needed to be replaced.

After wresting the pipes off and peering into the pit, I began what is probably the most disgusting jobs a homeowner can do.  Emptying out about 50 gallons of raw sewage from a hole in your back yard.  The only thing that could make this worse is if it was inside the house, as they typically are.  However, I don’t really count this as a blessing in the big picture.

Once the pit was empty, and the old pump removed, it was a simple process of getting a new pump from Lowe’s (Home Depot’s weren’t up to snuff), attaching some PVC to it and lowering it in the pit.  A quick test showed it worked great, emptying the pit in about 1½ seconds, completely silent.  Well, while the pump was silent,  the pipes rattled enough to be heard through most of the house.  I’m still working on a way to quiet this banging every time the pit empties.

After more research and learning, I came to the realization that these pumps fail after about 5-15 years, unpredictably, and need to be replaced.  I’m not sure that we’ll still be here in 5 years, let alone 15, but it doesn’t make sense to bury everything under 16 inches of dirt again.  So I decided I was going to come up with a way to make it accessible for any future repairs.  This provided the next educational opportunity – how to build a ‘chamber’ around the setup so the lid can be accessed easily.  I decided to go with concrete block and brick.  I poured a small footer (probably too small, but didn’t have much space to work with) and then put in a course of half-size concrete block and 2 courses of concrete brick.  Practicing (or beginning) masonry in a 2 foot deep hole with lots of natural obstacles isn’t recommended.  Here’s where  it ended up:

I still have quite a bit of work to do, figuring out how to cover the top (I’m leaning towards a hinged wood cover) and make sure that it squares to the house so it doesn’t look completely cock-eyed.  It looks like we’re in the home stretch on this one.  I’ll throw a picture of the finished goods here when I get it done, hopefully this weekend.

Tags: gross, home repair, homeowner, sewer pump

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 6:07 pm and is filed under Joys of the Homeowner.