Skip to main content

The more you know - Grinder Pumps

           
            Up until this moment, I had never heard of or seen a Grinder Pump.  It's actually a very common piece of plumbing equipment that is usually found in commercial businesses or homes, like mine, that are located lower than the nearest municipal sewer line.  It's designed to prevent waste water backup.  


             (Sorry for such a bad video but there is so little information out there)  

            Now exactly how my house sits lower than the nearest municipal sewer line is beyond me.  After all, when my house was built, it appears to have been done so in such a way that all the water flows away from my home and downhill.   So what I'm thinking is that the grinder pump is there to "push" the waste into the sewer lines that are a good football field distance from my home?  My property is the last in the boro to be hooked into the municipal lines so I suppose I could be "down hill" from them?

            I might be wrong here and it would not be the first time.  

            However my grinder pump needed to be replaced, and frankly it is our fault for letting it get to this stage and falls under the column of homesteading mistakes.  It would have also helped if we recognized the issue before it became a bigger issue, which we didn’t do. 

          


            Back in July when Susan and I were on vacation in Tennessee, our grinder pump alarm went off.   It went off once before in the previous year when our power went out for an extended period of time, we simply told her daughter where the off switch was, and didn't think of it again.

            Now in October, we have signs that the pump's chamber is overflowing.   Actually it was my neighbor who noticed it first as the ground was wet surrounding the pump chamber.  We opened it up and decided to close it immediately.  Yep, it was bad.

            Great, just great.

            It would also appear that alarms go off for a reason. 

            Now there are pumps that we could have bought online for about 1/2 to 1/3 of what we ended up paying.   However we were only able to find one plumbing company that was willing to do the work, which by the way we will never again use, basically stated they could not guarantee their work using a pump we bought.   Nor would they honor any guarantee that came with the pump.  

            So it was their pump...or nothing.

            Plus it would have taken one week for delivery even with our Prime membership.   Susan and I frankly didn't want to run up to the gas station to...you know; and even though I work from home…I got to take a shower sometime right?

            The other reason we wanted this done quickly is that we didn’t want sewage backing up into the house (we did let the issue go for 3 months after all)..   So we tried to watch our water usage over the weekend.  We just could not be sure how bad the issue actually was until it was fixed.

            In the end we also decided to buy a brand new pump.   The average lifetime of a pump is anywhere between 10 to 25 years - and the pump that was replaced was original to the property.   Our home will be paid for by then and hopefully we will be living the life we want to live as traveling vagabonds.   I've already marked my calendar however to do maintenance on the new pump.   

Labels:
Location: Stoneboro, PA 16153, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

What all the cool kids are reading.

Maybe we need to rethink invasive species???

Hi. As the writer of the post and feel that I need to clarify something. I do not advocate the planting of invasive species. The point that I'm trying to make, and clearly didn't, is that perhaps we should be thinking about an invasive species in a different light. Apples, figs and other crops are clearly non native to America and Europe but are widely cultivated because they have use to humans as a food source, animal feed, etc. Kudzu is an edible plant and although it is clearly harmful can it be used someway by humans? It's a food source, it's been used as a cloth and is showing some use as a building material. All I'm trying to do is to create discussion on how we can use invasive plants in new ways.   It's mid April here in Western Pennsylvania and so far it's been warm and wet.  The buzz of lawnmowers fill the air as I gallivant through my back yard collecting dandelions to make some tea and bread with them.  I had always known that they w
Post a Comment
Read more

Why didn't Erie, PA develop into a bigger city?

          Recently I had to travel up to Erie, PA for business.   It's about an hour north of me and is a rather small city, having just under 100 thousand people living in it.   It played an important role in the founding of America,  - where it was the headquarters for Oliver Perry's flagship Niagara during the battle of Like Erie in the war of 1812 .            It was also a important shipping center, being Pennsylvania's only access to the Great Lakes which was the easiest way to trade with parts of Canada at the time as well as move goods to the cities of Detroit and Chicago, which in the mid to early 1800's were just starting to develop.  It was also directly north from Pittsburgh which was a major industrial city at that time.     Yet Erie never really grew beyond it's humble beginnings and I wondered why.   Like any good sleuth I turned to the internet where I found mostly wrong answers.    Many people thought the port of Erie was to shallow to handle most
3 comments
Read more

Don't leave the rural areas behind.

This blog was started because I had lived most of my life as an urban dweller; I wanted to record my adventures as I tried my hands at different things and I never pictured this blog would become what it did. Country life suits me in some ways.   I'm at a point in my life where I can appreciate looking up into the night sky and seeing thousands of stars, just like I did as a kid.   I just love how the moonlight bathes my beautiful sleeping wife in a creme colored light.   Country life is more peaceful and a lot more hard work than I would have ever expected.  While my neighbors and I may not agree politically or philosophically, my new lifestyle has given me insights on how they view the world. This brings me to my main point.   Here in rural America we simply don't have public transportation, nor do we have a lot of manufacturing or diversity or hospitals or even great education...and if we are going to move forward with a brighter greener future that we all want then we canno
2 comments
Read more