Using basement sump water to cool the house

[GaryGary]

Hi,
Maybe run the water through the A coil or a hydronic baseboard "heater", and then out to the yard to water the landscape.
The landscape watering could be like the systems they use for grey water landscape watering.

Seems like putting a Kill A Watt meter on the sump pump would be worthwhile to find out how much of a power hog it is. If the power usage is high, then maybe get a more efficient pump, and use the regular sump pump as backup. It could even be a solar powered pump with a car battery for night pumping -- maybe something line a TopsFlo or one of the small March submersible 12 volt pumps?

Gary

[Daox]

I have put a kill a watt on the sump pump. It uses next to nothing. While its running it takes around 300W I believe, but it really doesn't run that often.

[TheyCallMeDave]

Originally Posted by Daox

Does anyone know how cold the refrigerant gets through a-coils? Does it get cold enough to produce condensation?

A Residential Cooling Coil runs between 35 to 45 f . typically, depending on the load on the Cooling Coil . If your Sump Water is much higher than this, then youll get some degree of cooling but it will be muggy inside the house because it wont be dehumidifying like it would with a colder cooling medium .

If you are getting thru sump pumps every 1-1.5 years due to continual on and off...theres a good chance theres an underground spring nearby feeding water in , in large amounts . My friend had this problem and his electric bills were astronomical from the Sump Pump energizing about every 30 seconds .

[Xringer]

Originally Posted by TheyCallMeDave

My friend had this problem and his electric bills were astronomical from the Sump Pump energizing about every 30 seconds .

One thing I've noticed living on the side of a hill, is long pipes running down hill,
from the sump pump, can cause a siphon effect.
If the water is coming in pretty fast, the siphoning action might keep up
with the in-flow, or run just behind it.

I got my neighbor across the street to add about 60 feet of hose to his pipe,
which was dumping on the grass, right beside his house.
(And going right back in to his basement).

I could see the hose jump when the pump came on, but water would still
be flowing for a long time after the pump shut down.
Depending on the speed water was coming into his basement,
sometimes the siphoning would go on for 20 minutes before the pump re-started.
When there was less flooding, the siphoning would run for a few minutes
and stop, without the pump coming back on.. For a while anyways..

[Daox]

Well, when I had the cooler running the couple of afternoons that I did, it was condensing a fair amount of water. Of course, the room was already around 80F and 80% relative humidity, so the dew point was quite high.

Also, I don't have the abnormally high sump pump use, my uncle does. We both came up with the idea while talking at a family get together. This was mostly a proof of concept. I think that you'd have to upsize the a-coil, but you could attain a fair amount of cooling with as much his sump pumps run.

[AC_Hacker]

Has your uncle built his house on a spring?

-AC_Hacker

[Daox]

Something like that. He lives in a subdivision. Him and his neighbor have the same issue.

[AC_Hacker]

Maybe a lawyer would be a more appropriate solution than a sump pump.

-AC_Hacker

[Daox]

Yeah, thats not going to happen. The house has been there for quite some time even before my uncle and his family moved in.

[Xringer]

Back in the early 70s when we started house hunting, checking the water-line
in the basement was the first thing we looked at.
I recall one brand new home in Billerica, MA that not only had gallons of water
in the basement, it was raw sewerage water!
The road ran along the edge of a 40' high ridge, the newly occupied houses on the upper ridge road,
all had septic tanks. Gravity was bringing all the "water" down into the backyards on the lower road.

I asked if there was any homes available "up there", pointing up to the sources.

We ended up in an old (1956) house in Woburn, that only had a 4" water line on the basement walls..
I was looking right at it, at the exact same time the owner was telling me,
"We Never get water down here"..

But, the price was right and location isn't bad.. We knew there would be floods.
We just never expected so many 100 year floods, in so few decades..

If I had it to do over again, I would NEVER buy a house with a basement,
unless it was on the peak of a good sized hill and had no watermarks..

Cheers,
Rich

PS:
The sellers moved out after placing "Plastic" faucet caps on the leaky washing machine taps.
Hours later, the cheap plastic caps burst and flooded the basement..

It was August 1973, I found the Ace hardware store nearby and started collecting water removal stuff.
Been collecting ever since.. I also learned how to solder 1/2" copper that day too!