With winter knocking at the door, is your sump pump in good condition for the season? Especially if you don’t have a backup sump pump, having a sump pump that is in good condition and ready to go can make the difference between a delightful holiday and miserable days of continuous work or significant water damage from winter basement flooding. In Rochester, sump pump winterization should be a serious consideration to avoid water damage and stress, as we’ll see in the following holiday tale.
Winter is on the Way: Is Your Sump Pump Ready?
In the 90s, in a house in upstate New York, a home was getting ready for Thanksgiving. The smell of pies cooling and vegetables boiling was in the air, with plans for a grand holiday with plenty of family – after all, the matriarch had nine children, along with countless grandchildren. The adolescent son of the household was sent downstairs to the basement to grab a roasting pan that was stored there. He quickly returned upstairs to look for his dad.
“There’s water partway up the basement steps,” he reported. There has been a lot of rain in previous days, and it was now leaking into the basement space. Though the family had a sump pump, it hadn’t turned on. There was an ancient sump pump stashed in the basement, which was located and plugged in. The switch was broken, and it ran continuously until it was unplugged again. With water entering the space quickly enough to require operation every few minutes, it wasn’t enough to run the pump continuously.
It was finally determined that with no stores open on the holiday, the pump would need to be manually plugged in, and then unplugged, every 10 minutes, until the stores opened and a replacement could be purchased. The father and son duo saw to the miserable task, but it made it very difficult to enjoy the holiday properly. It was later determined that the failure in the newer sump pump could have been prevented with a little maintenance.
How will your holiday season go? If you’re not sure whether your sump pump will stand up to the challenges winter will bring upstate New York, it’s time to get it checked and, if possible, backed up or replaced. Storm Basement Waterproofing in Rochester has sump pump winterization solutions for keeping your basement dry all winter. Why not give them a call and see how they can help keep your home more comfortable during a long upstate winter?
