Keeping your basement dry and your basement belongings safe from floodwater is an ongoing battle. It does not end after you’ve installed a sump pump that works. The average life span of sump pumps is anywhere between five to eight years. But if you know how to do sump pump repair, you can keep minor maintenance problems from blowing up into damage that can't be repaired.

It is important that you do everything right when you set out to have a sump pump installed in your house. This way, you’re sure that your sump pump can potentially withstand, and even exceed, its average life span. Two of the most important things that you should consider when building a sump pump are the capacity of the system, which means how much water can the sump pit hold and how fast the sump pump can drive water away; and the total dynamic head (sum of static head and friction head), which is simply a computation to arrive at the rate at which the pipes can carry water out of the sump pump pit. These two factors will determine the size of the sump pump that’s right for the amount of load it is meant to take on.

Maintaining the pump becomes easy when you’ve set up your sump pump properly. When the load is commensurate with the machine’s capacity, your sump pump will be able to operate efficiently, thereby avoiding unnecessary and premature sump pump repair along the way.

Here are some simple things to remember when you do your regular sump pump maintenance checks:

1. Check to see if the float is working. The float is the ball in the pump that rises and sinks with the water level in the sump pit, and “signals” the motor to pump out water when it reaches a certain level. Make sure that it moves freely up and down with the water.

2. When the motor is on and the pump is running, examine the outside pump to see if it is pumping out water. If it’s not, the problem could be caused by a check valve that’s stuck, a clogged water pipe or an impeller that’s was unfastened from its shaft.

3. Has the sump pump been inactive for a few months? Make sure it’s still in working condition by inducing it to run. Pour enough water into the sump pit to raise the float enough to activate the water.

4. Conditions may have changed from the time you installed your sump pit. Check to see if your sump pit has been filling water more quickly than it used to. In which case the amount of water seeping in could have increased to a level that’s more than your sump pit can take. To remedy this, you can either replace your current sump basin with a larger one, or have an adjustable float switch installed. Then you can adjust the floater accordingly so that it doesn’t trigger the pump until there’s a higher water level.

5. Finally, make sure that the dedicated control circuit and circuit breaker that you have installed for the sump pump are working properly.

By regularly conducting these minor maintenance checks, you’ll be able to catch sump pump repair problems at the earliest instance, thereby avoiding costly major repairs.