In article ,
Toller wrote:
...snipped...
A drain could have been run easily enough during construction, but it is on
the wrong side of the house to do it now. I wonder if there was some code
that required a pump rather than a gravity drain.



My Mom's home is in a development built in the mid sixties. My family
moved there in 1967, the houses were 2 or 3 years old at that time.
Every home in the devolpment is built with one of 2 floor plans
(Acutally 4 floor plans if mirror images count as separate.) and
every house had a sump pump installed whether it needed one
or not. The first time the sump pump operated my folks had been
living there about 8 or 10 years and they couldn't figure
out what the sound was. I guess the pump has come on no more than a
dozen times in almost 40 years. However, the original pump did fail at
some unknown time, and was not discovered until there was some minor
flooding in the basement.

My advice is to cover the pump so you can use the space, but leave it
accessible and operational, unless you are 100% sure that it will
never be needed.

--
Often wrong, never in doubt.

Larry Wasserman - Baltimore, Maryland -