After moving, one of the first things I did was pay to get the septic tank pumped. Afterwards, I was pleased to discover that my 20 year-old effluent pump looked as though it was on board the Titanic. This video is just a basic overview of what I learned about the system by replacing the pump and its junction box.
-October 2018
*****
UPDATE (November 2022):
The 'new' pump died yesterday. It survived for four years and one month. As I pulled it up, it was a rusty mass of mess that actually had pieces of metal falling off. Because the price of replacement (of a LIBERTY 257 series) had jumped from $141.51 to $210.75, I decided to go with Harbor Freight's comparable submersible effluent pump, a ½HP DRUMMOND, which was $159.99 and seems just as well-built. Time will tell.
As for the splice box, it did a great job. Very little condensate was inside. Some corrosion to the bare copper was evident, and so I was more careful to cover any exposed wiring this time. The silicone plugs did a nice job; I was easily able to pop one out in order to rewire the new pump, and it was then just as simple to replace.
This time, as an experiment, I placed inside of the splice box (on the bottom) a few pieces of scrap copper wire, just to act as a sort of anodic lightning rod. The idea was to have these piece of copper become consumed over time, thus absorbing most of the free ions that would otherwise be available to contribute to the degradation of wiring inside of the box. Note that the splice box is a rather well-sealed environment, making it somewhat of a closed system. Thus, the chemical change occurring to the copper inside is a reaction that can be controlled, and much like any stoichiometry problem, guiding the process(es) taking place becomes a game of recipes, in which we need only to determine the limiting reagent in order to slow degradation. One can bake only so many cookies with five pounds of flour. Again, time will tell.
24 авг 2024