As I continue to make progress downsizing, the basement was one of my recent areas of focus. It was so close to being completely empty, it was time to put the full court press on to finish the job. The basement consists of two large rooms, one completely finished and other finished except for an open ceiling. There are three storage/utility rooms and a bathroom. Of those four smaller rooms, only the bathroom is finished. I had "stuff" to disposition in the bathroom and a few things in the partially finished room. I got that "stuff" dispositioned, shelving unit packed in the car for the trip to Ames and had only to run the carpet cleaner in the large unfinished room and the bathroom. I cleaned the carpet in large finished room a few weeks ago.
Carpet cleaning is a bit of time consuming job. I'd dump the dirty waste water in the toilet in the bathroom and use the utility sink in the bathroom to refill the tank. I went through a lot of tanks and about an entire bottle of concentrated cleaning solution.
All was going well as I finished up in the bathroom. I dumped the last of the waste water and was getting ready to clean up carpet cleaning machine. When you dump a few tanks of waste water in the toilet, it will automatically flush. After I dumped the last tank I needed to clean the toilet with the toilet brush. All going well as my task nears the end and I'm feeling a huge sense of accomplishment having nothing left in the basement and a freshly cleaned carpet. After cleaning the toilet with the brush, I needed to flush it and maybe clean and flush it a second time. That last flush scared the crap out of me as the water filled to near the top of the bowl. I tried it again and that's when I noticed my freshly cleaned floor was getting wet. Not good. What is going on? Fortunately I hadn't cleaned up the carpet cleaner machine yet, so could use it to suck up the water from the damp carpet.
The plumbing in the bathroom drains into a sewage ejector pit in a small utility room. I immediately suspected the sewage ejector pump had failed. I certainly couldn't hear it running. The breaker hadn't tripped and the outlet still had power. The last thing I wanted to do was call a plumber tomorrow when my plan was to head to Ames.
Similar to my sump pit the motor plugs into float switch that trips and applies power to the pump when the water level gets high. I removed the pump plug from the float switch and plug it in directly and was relieved that the pump worked and you could hear the water being evacuated. So the float switch is suspect. I figured it may have just got stuck or hung up on something. I recalled having a float with switch from an old pump that may have come out of our community well or one of three or four pumps I've used to drain water from my pool. The trick was finding it. It could have been thrown away or taken to Ames (not likely). A quick check of the old pumps in my shed and I thought I was out of luck. But fortunately I found it hiding behind some yard signs I inherited when I bought the house. So I test the pit using the replacement switch and it indeed does work.
Now I needed to figure out how to get the lid off the pit. Easier said than done. Three bolts in the rusty lid were easy enough to remove, but a couple of 2" PVC pipes with rubber gaskets were hard to loosen. One pipe was the water evacuation pipe and the other was a vent to the outside. I also had a third rubber plug for the two electrical cords. All these rubber gaskets were very difficult to break free and it was very hard to get my fingers under the lid to lift it, while at the same time hold the pipes down. It wasn't working. I didn't want to cut any pipes and didn't want to destroy the rubber gaskets. I looked for some tools in case the gaskets were glued to the PVC pipe, but though I'd try heat first. The heat worked and with quite a bit of effort and an assistant to hold the pipes down, I was able to get the lid up about 6" before it hit a larger diameter coupler. That would have to do. It was enough to get one arm inside and see what I'm doing or two arms inside without being able to see because my chin was on the gross rusty lid.
It was also gross inside, but fortunately the basement bathroom is seldom used and may have never had been used for a #2. It's mostly dirty water from the utility sink, or in this case carpet cleaner waste water via the toilet. I manually operated the float switch, and verified it did not work. It wasn't stuck. It just didn't work. The old float was tied in there with a cable clamp and zip tie which I carefully clipped and got the old switch removed.
Getting the new float installed was not easy. I had it clamped and cable tied in there three times, but it didn't work because it was either too close to the wall of the pit and would get hung up. Or the way the clamp and zip tie were oriented along with the shortness of the attachment point was too stiff for the float to rotate. I installed and removed zip ties twice before finally getting it oriented in such a way it floated properly and didn't hit the side of the pit. I tested it one last time, then reinstalled the cover and tested it again. Job complete.
There is some satisfaction in getting something like this repaired, especially when you just happened to have the part you need. But it cost me a few hours of valuable time and will most likely delay my trip to Ames tomorrow.
If you've had enough time to read this lengthy post, I feel sorry for you for wasting so much time. The only thing worse is that I took the time to write it. 🫢
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