Frozen Sump Pump

Some of you may remember a blog I did on our sump pump– The Sound of Music I called it. I shared how I had come to depend on the reassuring sound of the motor humming followed by the “knock, knock, knock” that indicated water was being pumped out.

On Saturday afternoon hubby and I noticed the humming sound of the motor but the “knock, knock, knock” was missing. We looked at each other in horror and then shot down the basement to take a look.(It is a lovely thing isn’t it?)

We disconnected the electricity and then the white pipe that is the exit pipe. We plugged her back up and she was working just fine- evidenced by us getting sprayed with water.

After determining the pump was fine we knew there had to be something else. We opened the area that allows access to the crawl space under the garage to see if the pipe had busted. All was well there. We knew the pipe had to have frozen once it exits the house. We bundled up and headed outside. Digging began.

We have been wanting to redo the exit for our sump pump since we moved in. It is not buried properly (deep enough) which helped on our digging activities, but probably was the culprit in our pipe freezing. We dug the pipe up and then grabbed our plumbing snake to see what the issue was. About 3 – 4 feet into the pipe we hit something solid- it had to be ice!

We started heating up water to pour it on and down the pipe. In a bit Mike ran downstairs to see what joiner we had in case we needed to cut open the pipe. I continued to pour in water and low and behold an icicle floated to the edge of the pipe! That was the best sight of the afternoon! I grabbed the snake and started breaking up the ice. The ice burst out, broke the pipe at the seam and water blew out everywhere! That was fantastic fun!

Lucky for us we had one joiner and a 10 foot piece of pipe so we could piece things back together. A little primer, glue and finessing and it was all hooked back together with no ice!