How’s it going everybody? It’s Lucas Scheele with KC Pier and Kansas City Property Guys. And today we’re actually out in Liberty, Missouri. Going to be looking at a little bit of a foundation job, but today we’re specifically going to be focusing on the sump pump. We have our director of operations, Brian Dufour, here on site today for KC Pier and he’s going to give us the low down on our system. Let’s jump right into it.
Lucas Scheele:
How’s it going today, Brian?
Brian Dufour:
So far so good.
Lucas Scheele:
Where are we at today?
Brian Dufour:
Today we’re in Liberty, Missouri. We have a couple of projects going on today. What we did is … Years ago they put on a back deck and they decided to add and enclose it in and when they did that they didn’t do anything underneath. They just put these right on the three inch concrete. Over time this settled. What we did is we came in and we dug down five foot and we put in 12 inch sonotubes and then we lifted right around three and a half inches. Right now these are still curing. They’ll probably take another three or four days to fully cure before we take the pressure down. And once that’s down we’ll come in and we’ll cosmetically touch it up and make it all look good.
Interior Drain
Brian Dufour:
Where we’re at now is we’re in the basement of the job we were just discussing in Liberty and we’re doing a little unique project that we came up with that’s worked really well in stone foundations. We’re doing an interior drain. There’s a four inch drain underneath this two inch grate that’s above. And the reason for the two inch grate is stone foundations are never level or plum enough for us to run our dimple board or a wall sheeting up to prevent the water from getting in.
Brian Dufour:
What we did was we came up with a solution where we have two inch pool drain that is leveled with the concrete. What’ll happen is the concrete in the back, we will slip just a little bit to the drain. Any water that runs down here will run into the great drain and then disperse into the four inch drain and then it’ll run over to the sump pump that we have here in the middle.
Sump Pump System
Brian Dufour:
And as you can see here, what we do with ours is we cut out a hole and we run the four inch drain directly in and then we run the two inch pool drain directly in. That way there’s nothing to slow the process down when the water wants to come in. Today what we’re going to do is we’re going to get into a little more detail about our combo system that we use in every house we put a sump pump in. Most people have different pumps that they use. We have one. We have a three quarter horse main pump and a third horse backup pump that’s made by Pit Boss.
Brian Dufour:
The reason why we use a combo is well, because we just lose power a lot in the Midwest. We have a bunch of tornadoes, we have massive rains, wind. Anytime that the power out, we want to make sure that we have an additional pump that’s in the basement to help reduce you from flooding during your time of crisis. With that being said, what we have is our three quarter horse is one of the biggest pumps in the industry that you put into a basement. The reason why we use it is the same reason, we want to make sure it keeps up with whatever water that is coming down and whatever we do.
Brian Dufour:
This pump will put out a 3,500 gallons per hour every 10 foot. It can definitely hold up to what it’s doing. The pump comes with two cords. The main cord is directly connected to the pump and the other cord is directly connected to the float. These plug in together. And the reason why these have two plugs is because it’s for a maintenance issue. Not every time that you have a sump pump problem that it’s the sump pump itself. It could initially be the float. And with that, what they’ve done is they’ve made it where if it’s the float, you don’t have to buy a brand new sump pump.
Brian Dufour:
We can come in, we can exchange the float out and then you’re as good as new. It makes it very easy and it’s very cost effective for the homeowner during the time of them having the pump. With that being said, what we’ll do is we’ll go into the backup pump. The backup pump is a third horsepower pump, which is pretty big for a backup pump in general considering in your new construction a third horsepower is the main pump that they put in the houses. We like to make sure that we are covered in all bases.
Brian Dufour:
With the third backup, it’s also with the same level as the main pump, it’s not up above and the reason being is we want to make sure that if you get a flash flood and your power’s out, that the pump has time to get all the water out of your basin. During that, it also comes with two just as the main pump. You have the main connection that connects into the battery that we’ll get to, and then you’ll have the float that is independent and plugs into this as well. And the concept exactly the same.
Maintenance
Brian Dufour:
If you have a maintenance, you don’t have to change the entire pump out. We have the option of changing just the float or just the pump versus you having to buy a brand new system. That makes it very, very easy. And with the cost of doing both of them, it’s not that much more than just putting the combo in versus the regular pump. That’s why we put both of them in and we highly, highly recommend it every time we’re in a house. What we’ll do from here is we will get into the backup system. This is a standard backup box.
Brian Dufour:
What it is is right now it’s empty, but what happens is you have a battery that goes in, the battery connects very simple red and black wires. It has its own connection. It has a trickle charge up top, 12 volt battery. From there, you have two ports in the back. This is where your backup pump connects, and then where the backup float connects. Once that’s in, it snaps on. Now what I like the most about this particular system itself is it’s LED. There’s no lights, there’s no nothing.
Brian Dufour:
If anything is going on with this system, it tells you exactly what’s wrong here. There’s no guessing, there’s no nothing. If you ever have a problem, it tells you exactly on the side here what’s going on. Any of these that pop up here, you can read over here and it tells you exactly what’s going on. If any of this happens and you have a question, you can call us directly and we can walk you exactly through the basins and it might be something that’s a two minute fix that you don’t have to worry about or take time off work to meet us to come out and fix it.