Yesterday, around 2 PM, while I was working on the cabinet doors for the Pop Top, my wife came out to tell me that when she flushed the toilet, it overflowed onto the floor and sewage came up in the bathtub. That could only mean that one, there was a clog, or two, the sewage pump in my lift station tank in the back yard had stopped pumping. It has to pump my sewage uphill about a foot to get into the street sewage lines.
I couldn’t understand how the pump had died less than a year after the city guys replaced the original that had burnt out. At the time, they told me the next one I’d have to pay for and I didn’t have the sales receipt for this one to make good on the warranty.
I opened the cap on the check pipe I had installed just below ground level and water came out. The tank was full and overflowing. I dug down to uncover the tank top, removed the top and pump and then went over to the city utilities and spoke to the boss to ask for advice. He came over and tested the wiring and declared the pump dead. Then he found what looked like some rag sticking in the intake that the blades couldn’t chop up, so it burned up the pump. (I found out later it was a medicated wipe that my wife had flushed down the toilet) He said if I got a replacement he’d be back over in a while to help me put it in.
I went to Home Depot to get a replacement. I bought a larger, cast iron pump and when I got home I called the guy at the utilities and described it to him and he asked if it said sump pump on the box. It did. Nope, I needed a sewage pump.
So, back to Home Depot to get a refund and buy a sewage pump. They had the same pump I had at home, but had a better quality pump of the same brand, more HP and GPM flow, so I bought the only one they had.
I brought it home and took it out of the box to test it to make sure it ran. As it handled larger waste solids, I look at the bottom opening…it looked the same as the one I had in the tank. I checked the model number on the pump. It was the cheaper model, not the one that was supposed to be in the box. Someone had, accidentally or purposefully, swapped punps in two boxes. Home Depot got ripped off and so did I.
OK, back to Home Depot for the third trip to get a pump. No more of the “betterâ€
