basementdrainagepumpsump-pump
I need both groundwater drainage as well as laundry room sewage pump in basement.
Should they be separate pumps (asump pit with pump and 40 liter sewage ejector reservoir with pump) or could ground water drainage be connected directly to ejector pump reservoir?
If so, any precautions need to be made to avoid sewage water going under the floor in drainage pipes? Or does that add too many risks and best to go with two separate systems?
Current code leans to GFCI the heck out of it, and if it nusiance trips or fails (as they do with some regularity; typically about 10 years) and backs up sewage or water, tough noogies. People who sell GFCIs write the codes, and they have been expanding places where GFCIs are required for years. As of 2002 code (at least) there was still an exception for sump pumps and freezers, but those have been removed due to either "greater care for your safety" or "vast sums of money from GFCI makers .vs. no sums of money from people with flooded basements and freezers full of rotting food" in the code-writing cycles. [It should be self-evident that the linked page is from the side with all the profit in this game, and just a tad smug/biased.]
I would NOT change the ejector pump to a dual, nor add anything to its circuit - sewage backups stink. A dedicated breaker with one outlet is one way to be certain that nothing OTHER than a pump failure or power outage causes the ejector pump to stop; and depending on the pump, it may need the entire circuit to itself, period. Even if it does not, sharing is poor practice, IMHO. If you would like to add a GFCI to it, put in a blank face GFCI in-line before the outlet, or a GFCI breaker. If it's installed to code as of the time it was installed, I'd suggest leaving it alone, but that's up to you.
OK... so the mystery has been solved. :-)
The problem got so bad today that the failure rate reached 100% (every time the pump came on it would churn for >30 seconds)... I got a lot of text messages. When I got to the pump, I noticed that during these failures there didn't seem to be any flow at all, and I could feel the pressure build up around the coupler just below the flow control check valve (the one above the ejector pump).
I began to suspect the issue was with this valve, so I took it off and found it was basically just a disk inside a cylinder. It was not attached to anything (no hinge to keep it from flipping over freely). This effectively made the valve stop flow in either direction. I guess that the valve was originally something like this:
The issue may be similar to the issue described in this video, except my valve (American Granby SPCV200) was a swing check valve:
Best Answer
At the end I will go with 2 pumps and 2 reservoirs. Sump pit and small pump will be deeper, but only for emergencies as I don't expect much water there. For ejector pump I'll go with all-in-one pump that will be placed in sealed reservoir under floor. Better redundancy and avoiding accidental mix of sewage and drainage this way.