The Twin Cities just had the 2nd wettest April on record, much of it falling as rain in the past few days.  This saturated the groundwater and has caused sump pumps to fail all over the area.  The Verlo home was in this failing category, as we discovered the other night as we went down to start a load of laundry in the sub-basement.

Luckily, we have a drain where most of the water was able to go, but not all of the basement is graded properly, so the back corner in this picture has standing water (note the wet boxes in the corner).

The water was coming up from the sump pump pit. Our first thought was that perhaps a breaker had blown and the sump pump wasn’t running. However, just standing in the basement we could hear the pump gurgling, thus eliminating the loss of power hypothesis. So Mike and I stood for a minute gawking at each other in shock, questioning what to do next, since neither of us had any experience with this sort of thing. We finally determined that we weren’t going to figure out the problem just staring at each other (and the covered sump), so while Sara started moving soaking loads upstairs onto dry towels, I decided to unplug the pump and tackle removing the bolts from the lid.  After a few panicked runs to the garage for different wrenches, the lid came off and this is what I found:

We’re in luck. It was just a disconnected pipe! I’ll just reconnect the hose.

So simple.  All I needed was a screwdriver to tighten the metal clamp.

We plugged back in the sump pump and the pit drained in about a minute.  As I’m working on fixing the problem, Sara was busy cleaning the mess.

This was a wonderful opportunity to show the husband that semi-expensive, slightly silly looking Hunter rain boots, that sorta make Sara look like she should be working on a fishing boat, were totally worth the purchase.

Rather than waste a half hour mopping up the water, I went and grabbed our wet/dry vac from the garage.  My father-in-law got it for us at a garage sale a long time ago and it didn’t come with the correct fittings for the filter you’re supposed to use when vacuuming water.  So I improvised:

I’m holding the “dry vac” filter. The “wet vac” filter is on the inside of the upside-down vacuum and I used a piece of cardboard to keep it in place as we sucked up 5+ gallons of water from the floor. Just call me MacGyver.

The cap fits back in place and we’re feeling good about another do-it-yourself triumph as homeowners, at least for a moment.

Our celebration was short lived, as water was again coming out of the top of the pit the next morning.  Frustrated, I opened the pit back up, and found a different part of the pipe was loose, this time at one of the PVC 90 degree joints.  It was at this point that the issues were becoming comical, so obviously I had to take video:

Much more uncertain about what to do this time (since I’ve never worked with PVC), I headed down to the local Menards to find someone who could at least listen to my story of defeat. Luckily a patient gentleman was available to guide me in the right direction, and recommend some PVC cement.

The guy at Menards assured me all I would need was the Pcement, but not wanting to go back if it wasn’t enough, I also got a few extras that I can always return.

All I had to do to apply it was dry both ends of the PVC, coat them, and let it set for about an hour before testing the sump pump. Pretty straight forward instructions.

Two days later and the pipes are all still sealed and we haven’t had any further problems! What a beaut’!

Mike: 1, Sump Pump: 0