So I kind of alluded to this elsewhere but since it is a Non G project................
Essentially I went back to being a carpenter. What you are seeing here is a vertically mounted frame that is attached to the floor joists above it and which supports a pair of stringers that have been provided with a centre brace. The verticals consist of one 2 x 8 and one 2x 6, The stringers and the brace are all made from 2 x 8 cut to fit; I suppose you could call it a cradle. The why for it is this........
What you are looking at here are two shots of the sump pump pit cover. Back story on all this is that about 10 years ago, this area received more than 1/2 inch of rain in less than a day. My alarm bell that morning was the sound of my basement sump pump going off. The problem with the old system was that the pit was not deep enough to allow the pump to cycle properly; it would fire but run out of water too quickly to work properly. Left unattended it would burn out so U ended up having to sit by and baby sit it to keep it running and avoid surging.
At that I was lucky, most of the hood suffered flooded basements; we weren't alone.
Once the immediate urgency had passed, I reviewed the problem and decided to have the whole system replaced. What I got was a deep well sump pump pit, a whole new pump and discharge pipe, a backwater valve for the sewer, and a 45 gallon dry well buried in the back yard. That has served me well, up until now.
As Mike out in Sask could testify, this has not been a normal year for precipitation. What is now coming down is rain, and the ground is still too frozen to absorb it and distribute it out. Last weekend the pump fired, and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. At the peak of operations it was on a three minute cycle, meaning that from pump out to refill, to pump out again, 3 minutes. During the week it finally slowed down going to 4, then 6, then finally 10 minutes or so. But that frequency of operation pointed out one major issue to me. There was only one pump in the pit, it was 10 years old and it stood alone against the forces of liquid evil. If it failed, my basement would drown, and I would lose everything down there. Time for another upgrade.
What you see here, but can't really see due to the cover, is that the main pump was replaced with a new solid state one that has no float actuator. It uses a diaphragm vacuum initiator that senses water pressure in the pit based on amount of water that has entered the chamber and triggers the pump to move the water out and into the dry well. The old primary pump has become the back up pump and it may get retired completely later this year in favor of a second unit identical to the new primary. Then there is the third pump, which brings me to the why of the frame.
See, the third pump is a battery driven unit, Just In Case the power goes out during a heavy rain event. The power source and system for it is based on a Deep Cycle Marine battery and charger that comes in a suitcase sized controller box. All this needs to be hard wired, and there is a harness but being tethered like that means the whole business has to be closely located to itself. Hence the frame and cradle. Attached as it is to the frame, the cradle sits 40 inches off the floor. That gets the whole installation well up and out of harm's way. it also gets the charger close enough to a dedicated duplex so that it can be plugged in. The battery is already charged; it spent a day or so absorbing the necessary zottage from my Battery Tender Plus out in the shop.
The last item to fabricate is the shelf, which will sit on the cradle and do what shelves do. That will be cut from the piece of plywood that is leaning in the background. Won't happen today; i did all my cuts for the frame out on the quarterdeck yesterday. Today it is raining again and the saw-deck has been brought back inside the shop to keep it dry.
Fun.
Nick
