Sliver
Member
I apologize in advance for such an off topic post but I know there are some very savy pump specialists here and I have a couple of very specific questions.
The backstory is, 5 years ago my neighbor called with the dreaded question, "you are an electrician right?". Turned out she heard a buzzer from her basement that was labelled septic alarm that she turned off then she had a breaker trip in the panel. I found she had a septic tile bed located higher than the septic tank and was using an "effluent" pump to pump from the tank up to the tile bed. The pump was open circuit on the windings and the high level float switch was shorted out. I, being the good neighbor agreed to help. In the end we had a new "effluent pump" a new high level float (of a very similar quality to those we use every day in my workplace) a control system including a GFI circuit monitoring, pump run-on timer, and high level switch tied into the original buzzer alarm.
Well two days ago the buzzer went off again and I got the call again. Using the hastely penned print in the junction box I determined that the pump run-on timer had caused the alarm. I disconnected the timer, unplugged the pump and had her do her business as usual to see if the alarm would eventually go off on the emergency high level float. It did last night while she was in the shower. I had her plug the pump back in to see if the alarm would cancel and it did not indicating that the pump is definately the problem.
Today the whole thing is getting pumped out and another neighbor has advised that the original 1/2 h.p 120V effluent pump should actually have been a "sewage" pump. Being an electrician I couldn't argue the point until today at work I talked to a cooworker with some experience with a similar system and he recommended NOT to use a sewage pump as it could pump solids into the tile bed making for a costly problem.
Question 1. If a pump is rated as an effluent pump is it designed to work with liquid waste as is my case and should a sewage pump not be used in my case.
Question 2. I found a diagram of a sewage pump installation that showed a 1/8" hole drilled in the pipe a couple of inches from the pump outlet "to prevent airlocking". Would this be recommended in an effluent pump installation as well.
Thanks for the time reading and look forward to some responses,
Brian.
The backstory is, 5 years ago my neighbor called with the dreaded question, "you are an electrician right?". Turned out she heard a buzzer from her basement that was labelled septic alarm that she turned off then she had a breaker trip in the panel. I found she had a septic tile bed located higher than the septic tank and was using an "effluent" pump to pump from the tank up to the tile bed. The pump was open circuit on the windings and the high level float switch was shorted out. I, being the good neighbor agreed to help. In the end we had a new "effluent pump" a new high level float (of a very similar quality to those we use every day in my workplace) a control system including a GFI circuit monitoring, pump run-on timer, and high level switch tied into the original buzzer alarm.
Well two days ago the buzzer went off again and I got the call again. Using the hastely penned print in the junction box I determined that the pump run-on timer had caused the alarm. I disconnected the timer, unplugged the pump and had her do her business as usual to see if the alarm would eventually go off on the emergency high level float. It did last night while she was in the shower. I had her plug the pump back in to see if the alarm would cancel and it did not indicating that the pump is definately the problem.
Today the whole thing is getting pumped out and another neighbor has advised that the original 1/2 h.p 120V effluent pump should actually have been a "sewage" pump. Being an electrician I couldn't argue the point until today at work I talked to a cooworker with some experience with a similar system and he recommended NOT to use a sewage pump as it could pump solids into the tile bed making for a costly problem.
Question 1. If a pump is rated as an effluent pump is it designed to work with liquid waste as is my case and should a sewage pump not be used in my case.
Question 2. I found a diagram of a sewage pump installation that showed a 1/8" hole drilled in the pipe a couple of inches from the pump outlet "to prevent airlocking". Would this be recommended in an effluent pump installation as well.
Thanks for the time reading and look forward to some responses,
Brian.
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