We had our first taste of fall come on Saturday. It rained nearly two inches which is really unusual. Despite the fact that I plumbed the heat pump condensate to the sump and it has been running lightly all summer, wouldn’t you know that the pump failed Saturday morning.

We were trying to get ready to head out the door for a day of clean-up at my in-laws property. Since we were expecting it to be raining and miserable all day, we were getting our rain gear from the basement. Luckily I was near the pump and I heard the pump running dry. I went over to inspect and found that the screw holding the switch bracket in place had rusted off and had wedged the level switch in the on position.

Knowing that we were going to be gone all day and knowing that we expected a lot of rain, I could not leave the house with this situation the way it was and not end up with a lot of water in the basement. I have done this repair before, My first attempt was to extract the broken part of the screw. But the mud, low light and depth of the pump made my first attempt not successful. Since I needed to remove the pump to try and fix the problem, I decided to replace the pump instead. There is no guarantee that I can get the broken screw out anyway.

It is 9:30 AM Saturday. The local hardware store is five minutes away and open. The short of it is that I had the pump swapped out in an hour. There was no major issue and hopefully, I will have a spare if I can fix the old one.

Given that we already had a long day scheduled and that we were late to begin with, I appreciate that the local hardware store was not only open but had what I needed in stock. Remember what I said on Friday maybe not always what you want, but will work? In this case, I replaced a 1/6 HP pump with a 1/3 HP pump.

Well, the smaller one was doing the job fine. Secondly, I paid probably twice as much for this pump than the smaller one. Lastly, pumps rely on pumping for cooling and the on/off cycle is the hardest part of the job. It is possible that this is oversized and will have a reduced lifespan as a result. I guess we will see. But, we had a dry basement and most of the day to do what we needed to do. Despite the trade offs, this will be good enough and price checking after the fact, I paid the same as at the big box.

End Your Programming Routine: How’s that for timing? I just want to reiterate that I appreciate that I could get the job done in such a short period of time. Anecdotally, I was explaining to my boys what was the problem and me fixing it. Meanwhile, on Sunday, the pastor was lamenting how his father never taught him anything around the house (which of course was the lead to a deeper subject). But, I think I was given a strong message with this problem.