Keeping Water and Mold Out of Basement

Watching your basement slowly fill up with water is one of life’s more humbling adventures. I know because it has happened to me. That’s often enough to be annoying, for sure, but not quite often enough to force my hand.

Wet and Dry Vacuum: I already had one of these for my shop, and so I started using it in my basement. If your basement flooding is a minor problem, you might be able to get by with one of these instead of a pump. It will quickly take care of the kind of minor spot flooding you might get from a seeping wall, a leaking crack or something as simple as an overflowing washing machine.

But most wet vacs will hold just five or 10 gallons, and emptying them time after time can become a real chore. You wouldn’t want to rely on one for much more than spot cleanups. Even just half an inch of water spread out over an entire basement floor would be a major undertaking for a wet vac.

Small Portable Submersible Pump: This was my next step in the battle against basement water. These compact pumps are a lot better than wet vacs. The one I have usually gets me by all but the most unusual floods, and for light flooding conditions, portable submersibles have two advantages over real sump pumps.

First, they are inexpensive. Second, they require no installation. You can just plug one in, set it down on the floor, hook it up to a garden hose running out a door or window, and it will go to work, sucking up water as shallow as about 1/8 inch.

The simplest versions have no controls. Plug them in and they run until you pull the plug. I prefer the type with automatic switches. These will turn on when water appears, then shut off when the pumping job is finished. This protects your home even when you’re gone, and also protects the pump from running dry and overheating.

These little portables – sold at hardware and home centers – are OK for minor flooding, but they don’t have the capacity to deal with major flooding. If you are faced with chronic wet basements on a fairly regular basis, you need something better.

Sump Pumps: These have two advantages over wet vacs and portables. First, they can move lots of water fast. Second, installed in a sump, below floor level, they can often get rid of the water before it ever reaches your basement floor. Wet vacs and portables work only after you’ve already been flooded.

Sump pumps come in two basic types: uprights and submersibles. An upright (shown in the sketch above) has a pump in its base, powered by an electric motor on top of a long column. This puts the motor above water to protect it from water damage.

A submersible is short and squat, with a sealed motor, designed to run under water. Both types work well, but if power goes out during a flood, rising water can submerge an upright’s motor and damage it. That can’t happen to a submersible. Submersibles are also less obtrusive and operate more quietly.

Sizing – Sump pumps are made in a range of capacities, measured in gallons per minute or hour. One rule of thumb for calculating needs is this: The square footage of area draining into your basement times inches of rain per hour times 0.001 equals gallons per minute.

The trouble with this formula is that you often don’t have the slightest idea how much area is feeding water into your basement. So in most cases, you’re just as well off asking your pump dealer what size normally does the job in your area.

Sump Pump Installation – You can have your pump installed by a pro or you can do the job yourself. But before you start a do-it-yourself installation, check the regulations in your neighborhood to see how your wiring and discharge plumbing should be run.

Unless you are a fairly advanced home electrician and at least an average home plumber, a look at the regulations will probably convince you to hire a pro. For example, most electrical codes require a sump pump to have its own grounded circuit, run directly from the service panel, with a single three-hole outlet that is at least four feet above floor level.

Not many do-it-yourselfers are comfortable wiring new circuits all the way from the breaker box.

Keeping Water and Mold Out of Basement

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