How is a sump pump different from a sewage ejector?

A sump pump moves clear water: rain, runoff and seepage that gather in a pit or a driveway vault. A sewage ejector moves waste from fixtures lower than the sewer, such as a bathroom on the bottom floor of a hillside home, and it sits in a sealed basin with a vent. Neither can stand in for the other, and each job calls for its own pump.

How can I test my pump at home?

Run a hose into the sump or vault. Watch the float lift and the motor kick on, then see the level drop until the pump stops by itself. With an ejector, flush the toilet on the lowest floor and turn on that shower, and listen for the pump to start and stop. Humming with no water moving usually means a stuck float, a blocked impeller or a check valve that lets water slide back.

Why does my ejector alarm keep sounding?

Water in the basin has climbed past the level where the pump should have started. Usual causes are a float caught on wipes or on its own cord, a jammed impeller, a tripped breaker, or an old pump that has given out. Do not just silence it. Turn off the water on the lower level and phone us, because left alone the basin overflows onto the floor.

Does my home need a battery backup pump?

If a dead pump would flood a garage, a lower bedroom or an outdoor stair that ends at a door, a backup deserves a look, since winter storms and outages tend to arrive together. On an ejector, a battery alarm at the least is sensible. For a vault that collects water from a planter or a side yard, keeping those drains clear matters more than adding a pump.

Sump Pump Repair and Installation in the San Fernando Valley

Sump and ejector pumps in the San Fernando Valley

Two different machines get called a sump pump. The first moves clear water, meaning rain, runoff and seepage, out of a pit or a vault. The second, a sewage ejector, lifts waste from a toilet, shower or laundry that sits lower than the sewer, and it lives in a sealed basin with a vent of its own. A sump pump is either submersible, sitting down in the water, or a pedestal model with its motor up on a column; an ejector always works submerged. Repairs, replacements and new installs of both are part of this service, and each visit looks past the motor to the float, the check valve, the discharge pipe, the alarm and the power feed, since a pump can have good power and still move no water at all.

One of the likeliest places to find a pump at a Valley house is the bottom of a sunken driveway. A trench drain across the low end catches the rain and sends it to a vault, and the pump in that vault lifts it up to the curb or to a dispersal point on the lot. Leaves, grit and lawn clippings wash through the grate and settle in the vault until the float can no longer rise. The discharge pipe to the street can fill with silt or crack under a tire. A new pump is chosen by how high it must raise the water and how far the pipe runs, rather than by whatever the old pump's label says.

Hillside houses bring the other kind of pump. The hillside homes south of Ventura Boulevard in Encino, Tarzana, Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks and Studio City mostly went up from the 1950s through the 1970s, and on the downhill side of a street a lower floor can sit beneath the sewer main, so its waste leaves through an ejector. Wipes and grease foul the impeller, a check valve that leaks lets the pipe empty back into the basin so the pump keeps lifting a load it already lifted, and an alarm unplugged because it chirped warns nobody. Apartment buildings that park below grade often share one pit between a pair of pumps that take turns under a controller. If one of them fails, its partner covers without a sound, and nobody knows until a storm needs both. Nothing is replaced until you sign the written estimate.

What a pump visit covers

A float that moves without snagging and starts and stops the pump at the right water levels
A check valve that holds, and a discharge shutoff that has not seized
A high-water alarm placed where someone will actually hear it
Power from a dedicated circuit or outlet with the GFCI protection the code asks for, and no extension cords anywhere
Grit, leaves, wipes and grease cleaned out of the pit or vault
A real run with the pit filled, and on a two-pump system, each pump tested by itself

When to call about your pump

The alarm is sounding, or someone unplugged it to quiet it
The pump never stops, or it switches on and off every few seconds
A sewer odor on the lower floor of a hillside home
Toilets and drains on the lowest level gurgle or empty slowly
Water collecting at the foot of the driveway or against the garage door after rain
Nobody can say when the pump last got a test

Test it in the fall, before the storms

Valley summers are hot and dry, so a pump can sit idle from spring well into fall and then meet several storms in a row. Malibu, where 16 to 22 inches of rain a year falls mostly in hard storms between November and April, shows the same pattern of long rest and sudden work. Choose a dry weekend in October. For a sump or a driveway vault, run a garden hose into the pit and watch the float lift: the pump should start, pull the water down steadily and switch itself off. For an ejector, flush the downstairs toilet two or three times while the shower down there runs, and listen for the same cycle. Push the test button on the alarm too, and clear the leaves off the trench drain grate. If any step fails, call while the weather is still dry.

When a backup pump makes sense

A battery-powered backup is worth it where a failed pump would wreck something: a below-grade garage holding cars and boxes, a lower-level bedroom in a hillside home, or an exterior stair whose bottom step meets a door. Storms and outages tend to travel together, and a backup exists for exactly that night. Ejectors raise the stakes, since the alternative there is sewage across the floor, so a second pump, or at minimum an alarm with its own battery, belongs on the list. When a vault serves only a planter bed or a slim side yard, the smarter spend is usually on keeping its feeder drains clean.

The plumber tells you which case fits your property before anything else. When a backup is worth having, it appears on the written estimate as its own optional line.

Where pumps turn up around the Valley

On the flat floor of the Valley, from Canoga Park and Reseda to Northridge and North Hollywood, pumps are uncommon. They appear where someone dug down: a driveway lowered to reach a garage under the house, a den or wine room cut below grade, an apartment building that parks its cars beneath the first floor. Sepulveda Dam and Hansen Dam went up after the 1938 floods to protect the Valley as a whole, but neither does anything for rain that runs down a driveway into a garage. The hillside streets south of Ventura Boulevard add ejectors, and some yards on those slopes rely on a pump to push drainage up to the street.

West and north of the city line the ground gets steeper. Where Calabasas and Agoura Hills climb into the hills, and in the canyons of Malibu, from Trancas and Zuma to Latigo and Las Flores, storm water runs across yards toward foundations and lower doors. A sump at the low corner of a lot or at the end of a yard drain moves the water the slope delivers. Hidden Hills lots are mostly an acre or larger, which can mean a long run of pipe from the pit to its outlet. In Malibu, where most homes are on septic, a pump that belongs to the septic system rather than the yard drain falls under the City's septic program, and you will know which kind you have before anything is quoted.

Access shapes the job. A vault at the foot of a driveway is simple to reach; a basin under a lower deck, behind the guard gate in Hidden Hills, or inside a locked garage takes more setup. Mention on the phone where the pit sits and who can open the gate or the garage. The phone is picked up at every hour, holidays included; from Canoga Park we come to your address with the parts that pit is likely to need.