"Tony" wrote in message

A little background...

I bought my house with a full finished basement in 2004. A sump pump is
located in the boiler room
and is there for the toilet, sink and shower in the basement bathroom We
never used that bathroom,
except for a few months back in 2008 when we were remodeling the main
floor bathroom. It always
worked fine and would kick on when we showered. I havent used it since. A
while back, I wanted to
hear it work so I ran the sink, shower, flushed a few times and it never
went on. I thought that
maybe the level was so low from non use that it didnt fill high enough to
turn itself on.

I am now selling my house and an engineer was here today and told me the
sump pump does not work.
The pump has two wires coming from the big round base. It was plugged into
the wall by one of the
plugs, and the other plug was connected to the back of that plug so that
it only used one outlet.
After he left, I decided to put each plug into its own outlet and it went
on. I heard the pump and
the water. The problem is that it never stops, even after 5 hours. I hear
a loud hum coming from the
ground and it sounds like a washer machine with water being swished
around. Does anyone have any
idea what it is doing? I know absolutely nothing about these things.
Thanks.

Here is a link to a picture in case that helps:

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/e...11783/pump.jpg


Tony

I'd say bad float switch.

First, it's a waste water pump, not a sump pump, at least as I understand
the terms. A sump is often an open pit that is dug into the floor to pump
out groundwater and floodwater. Your pump does much the same but it's a
closed system because human waste can't sit in an open-to-the-air sump for
obvious reasons. The two wires you see are this:

One powers the pump motor and that's the one you have now (very
erroneously!!!) plugged into the wall outlet for five hours.:

The other wire is to the float switch. It ends in that dual plug/outlet
fitting and the pump plugs into it. When the tank fills, the float switch
closes and allows current to flow into the piggyback outlet to allow the
pump to turn on until the waste is pumped out. They can only work properly
in tandem.

I would guess that the float switch is either frozen by congealed muck or
has leaked and failed. It's actually a pretty cheap fix provided you didn't
burn out the motor by running it dry for so long. You should have noticed
something backing up by now - have you?

--
Bobby G.