How To Install A Sump Pump

Alright, so you’ve got your brand new sump pump and you’re just itching to install it! After all, the thing doesn’t do much good just sitting there. Well, first, we’ll go with the old standard suggestion. If you know a good plumber or even a good all around general home improvement guy, see if you can have them do the installation for you.

Installing a sump pump is a messy job and requires a bit of expertise. If you opt out of having a pro install your sump pump for you, then.. bust out the gloves, get some dirty pants on, and lets get started!

But wait? What’s next? Well folks, this is where it gets tricky and this is where I’m happy to help you out. This is also why I love HGTV so much! They put together an awesome resource on installing sump pumps which really help to clear a lot of things for me.

Here’s the quick and dirty basic guide for installing a sump pump:

First, we need some ingredients! You’ll need:

– the sump pump
– a good sledgehammer
– a post hole digger
– a bag of pre-mixed concrete
– some gravel or crushed stone
– a drill, with drill bits and hole saw
– a strong sturdy hack saw
– some PVC pipe and connectors
– PVC primer and cement
– 5-gallon bucket or 12″-diameter corrugated drain pipe
– filter fabric
– wrench
– Teflon tape (powerful stuff!)
– a check valve
– a good sized measuring tape
– safety glasses!
– work gloves (not that we mind getting our hands dirty!)

And here are the fast and dirty steps we take:

First, choose your spot! We’re looking for an area about 24 inches in diameter. Be sure to remove any concrete in the area.
Break out the post hole digger and start digging! Be sure to use good posture and take care of your back, or kindly ask someone else to do it. Keep digging till you have a pit about 24 inches deep.
Grab your 5 gallon bucket and drilling some irrigation holes into it with the power drill. Wrap the bucket up in your filter fabric and this’ll take care of any debris sneaking through.
Take your crushed rock and pour about two inches into the pit, then take your bucket liner and drop it in. Be sure that the lip of the bucket is flush with the floor, adding or removing crushed rock as needed.
Now, take more crushed rock and pour it in along the sides, filling up the sump pit gap.
Take your concrete and seal up the gap!
Now the fun stuff. While we wait for the concrete to dry, we’re gonna take our teflon tape and wrap around the threads of the PVC pipe connector. Then we hand-tighten it to the pump.
Now we’ve gotta find a good place for the PVC to drain out too. Once we’ve found it, we’ll route the PVC from the pump on outside.
And finally, we place our beautiful little pump into the sump pit and connect it too our PVC drainage system. As a last note, we make sure that we can access the pump easily if we ever need to work on it again.

And that was that! Very well done! I told you it was a quick and dirty guide! : )

Have you ever installed a sump pump before and are you interested in having your expertise shared with interested people from around the world? We’d love to work with you to put up a guide on Sump Pump Info.com! Contact us! Send an email to team@sumppumpinfo.com!

Your guide will be published along with your name and any other fun tid bits you’d like to share.