I am in the process of purchasing a new home that has 2 sump pumps in its basement. My current home has a single sump pump and I installed a Watch Dog battery backup system along with a warm spare pump plumbed and ready to replace the main pump. I like redundancy...

My question is, is a battery backup the best option with 2 systems to deal with? It is going to suck replacing 2 deep cycle batteries every 3 years. Are the water powered backup pumps a better option long term or is there a solution I am missing?

I am trying to guard against power outages and primary pump failures when I am not home.

Thoughts?

Thanks

Jeff

The water backup systems work great as I work in commercial maintenance and we have them at a few of our buildings. The battery units are okay as long as you don't mind buying new batteries every couple years.

Do you have two because the house needs them or is there two for redundancy. We have two in our office building for the basement but only one ever runs. The water never gets high enough to start the other one. If this is your situation I would only install a backup on one of them.

This is how my basement is, except both will run.  I did have a pump go out and the one kept up with the water fine.  Look for a hole in the crock with a pipe going to the other pump

see my post in your other thread in GD

Water powered backups have their place.. but have them installed correctly.

I attempted to install one in my place and can never get it to run correctly when I unplug the sump pump and let the crock fill completely.

I wanted the water powered backup because of not having to worry about replacing batteries. However, you have to run a line to the crock and install a double check valve (or more) depending on your local code.

Looking back on it I would have likely paid a plumber to install the battery backup system and just had it checked yearly to ensure functionality.

I had a Basement Watchdog setup in my basement that I decided to ditch and replace with a water-powered backup instead. The price of the new battery and acid cost as much as my new Liberty pump and check valve. The Watchdog batteries only last about 5 years if you top off the fluid levels quarterly and maybe a couple years with sealed batteries.

I think the water-powered backup pump will pay for itself in about 4 years, just from maintenance savings alone. Also, if you're without power for an extended period of time the Watchdog backup pump battery will run out of juice.

Water pump is cool but I dont have city water.

In Ohio every home needs a sump pump. Not every house has one, that doesn't mean that it isn't needed. We get a lot of rain here.

 
This really depends on the situation.. If you have a walkout basement chances are you won't need one. If you have a lower place than the floor of your basement to run a drain tile to you probably won't need one. If your house is on a sand ridge you most likely won't need one..most homes in my AO can not have a basement without a sump pump or you will have an indoor in ground pool.

My house is the lowest of all my surrounding neighbors, my sump pump runs almost continually in the spring.  It only stops when it hasn't rain for several days.   I've had my basement flood twice and both were my fault for being lazy and cheap.  The first time several neighbors had there OEM sump pumps fail so I got a new one, but didn't change it, I was young and dumb.  Sure enough, it failed.  The second time was due to a power outage.  How many times did I walk past the generators at the big box stores and think to myself I should get one?  A lot.  Power went out in the middle of the night and I couldn't get a generator until the next morning.  

Now I have a generator and a battery back-up.

If you have two pumps which could ever be running together, make certain that the output lines are sized to handle both pumps together.  My brother found this out the hard way last year with some very heavy rains here.  The secondary pump kicked on because the primary could not keep up.  The problem was the output pipe could not discharge both pumps at the same time.

JLE