Basement bath and laundry in the house we’re considering has a macerating sewage ejector pump.

What do I need to know about these?

Is this because the sewer line is above the level of the basement, so it has to pump "stuff" up to the street level?

If so, we lived in a house outside DC that had a pump. I don't know if it macerated anything, but it's reason for living was to move the house sewage up to the street, where the main sewer line was. It had a bit of a holding tank, so we'd hear it whirring at odd times, but it that wasn't really an issue. What WAS an issue were periods when the power was out. No laundry, no flushing, no washing dishes.

Does the place have a generator?

As an aside, I was thinking about generators this week. My in-laws had one because they lived out on Long Island in an area that frequently had extended power outages due to weather, downed trees, etc. How stable is your power supply? I can't imagine it would be very fun to be sitting in an Ohio winter with no heat...

Yes, that’s it.

I’m wondering if it needs maintenance/inspection and how often?

A generator is on the list.

I don't know much about them but I don't think there's regular servicing -- I think it's one of those things where when it breaks, you'll know. (Perhaps there is an alarm to warn you before the sewage backup starts -- we have an alarm on our septic pump for exactly that reason).

We would have needed the macerating pump to put a bathroom in our basement here, but we ended up not putting in the bathroom. We need it because our sewer line exits the house at the level of the basement ceiling -- perfectly fine when all the plumbing was on the first/second floor, but obviously not good if you want plumbing in the basement. The good news is unlike Nina's situation where it sounds like it pumped her entire house, yours is only needed for the laundry and basement bathroom, so if power is out, just pee in the upstairs bath and don't wash clothes til the power comes back on.

Actually, the house LL#1 rents now at college has one of these for her basement bath and laundry - she's never said anything about it and I doubt she actually knows what it is. So apparently it just does its thing no attention needed. :-)

Don't know anything about macerating pumps. No bathroom in our basement and the sump pump is what pumps the laundry discharge water into the overhead sewer.

But as Lisa said, there are alarms to help alert you if a pump isn't working. Not necessarily recommending this one as it was just the first one that came up in a search. I'm just posting it as an example:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Su...stem-92060/206496506

I'm guessing there are models with wifi, too.

By the way, if you plan to install monitoring devices you need to keep in mind that when the power goes out, internet may go out, too. Your generator will bring your devices back up, but your router may have nothing to talk to.

I think there are some systems that use a cellular connection instead of wifi.

I've never looked into this in detail but am raising the issue for consideration because I know it's a potential weak link in a monitoring system.

Good info, thanks! Sounds like the monitor needs a UPS, as does the router.

My son in law is a tech geek - I’ll put him on it.

I think Quirt had one in his Massachusetts house, so maybe he'll chime in. I think it was because the town's sewage treatment plant was undersized for its current population, and new developments had to have house-level pretreatment in the form of the macerating pump to get permits.

I think the development also had a package plant that did more pretreating before sending it on to the town's sanitary sewer. Or maybe the package plant did the final treatment and the development was not connected to the city's system at all. I don't recall for sure.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Good info, thanks! Sounds like the monitor needs a UPS, as does the router.

My son in law is a tech geek - I’ll put him on it.

If you have a backup generator, that should cover you as long as you have the right circuits switching over.

The problem we have is that Comcast service goes out at the pole. No internet, no cable, even though we have our generator plugged in and running. Our TV and modem have nothing to connect to.

Comcast does usually show up fairly quickly with a generator that they throw on the ground next to the pole and run an extension cord up to their equipment at the top of the pole. If the outage is for long enough, the generator runs out of gas and we're out of luck till they manage to come back and gas it up again.

That was the one thing that was good about DSL, because it ran over regular phone lines. Power outages didn't affect internet service unless the central station was down, which was pretty uncommon.

I don't have experience with ISPs besides Comcast; maybe Verizon and others work differently.

Important thing to remember is that wifi is great as long as you have internet service. That means not only the router, but your ISP.

If you need bulletproof, you need to look for monitoring devices that use cellular technology. Then all you have to ,supply is the power.

I rented a house on the beach once. Every house along there had a pump and a loud alarm and flashing light if they stopped working. There was a sign next to the light that said if it was flashing, call this number and report this unit.

One day I kept hearing something that sounded like a very muffled fire bell. I finally went outside and saw the light was flashing. The bell was the alarm. Inside the house it was just a gurgling noise.

I called the number. Ten minutes later, two guys from the town utility company came and fiddled with the pump and it eventually started working again.

I suppose the people who live there know the sound of the alarm and alert each other if the light is flashing.

I think there's a big difference between the whole house kinda pump that PJ and Nina are talking about and your macerator one. My mom has a whole house pump because they ran sewer down her street like 30 years after the house was built and the sewer line in the street is higher than her pipe exit -- so she needed a huge pump to pump everything from her house to street level -- its a long run and the pump is huge, expensive, and maintained by the sewer company. When it fails (which happened once) she had sewage back up all over the place - it was super gross.

The smaller macerator pump is different - it's small and only handles the waste from the basement. When I've seen them done around here, a lot of times they are literally installed under the toilet - either they are a little box that sits under the toilet tank or sometimes the toilet is on an elevated platform and the pump is under it (which I kinda hate - it looks like you are pooping on a stage). LL#1s is installed in a separate closet room and looks a lot like a sump pump - that's what I thought it was at first. But either way, it's handling a much lighter load than a whole house sewage pump and doensn't carry the same risk of an entire house's worth of sewage backing up if it fails.

WTG raises a good point about internet access during power outages. We have our router etc. on a UPS and it works pretty well, and honestly Comcast is usually the last thing to go down and the first thing to come back up -- they are way more reliable than the power itself. But if a tree brings down a pole, you will lose cable internet too, so cell service would make a lot of sense.