Homestead

Pumps-A-Lot Water Pump

Simple emergency sump pump

[This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2003 – MF]

This is a cool tool. It is a powerful water pump you can use without electrical power; instead it uses the Bernoulli effect from the water pressure in a hose. This pump saved us a few weeks ago. It rained all day and then at about 5:15 the power went out. Our sump pump in the basement had been going every two or three minutes but there were still two or three inches of water covering the cellar floor when I got home from work. I was desperate to keep the level from getting up to the furnace. Our neighbor Jan had a generator to run their sump pump, so she could offer me her PUMPS-A-LOT which they’d used to use before they got the generator.

You connect the pump to a faucet with a garden hose. Inside the unit, there’s a nozzle pointed at the output hose. It sucks water from below, spitting out that water together with the propelling water via the output hose. In truth, I didn’t believe it would work. The makers claim you can pump 800 gallons per hour or 6 gallons for every one gallon of water you use. But if it didn’t work, I’d be filling my cellar with more water. So I tested it in a bucket of water first. It worked! Like magic. It emptied the cellar in a few minutes! Since it has no moving parts, takes up little space, it is an ideal emergency tool.

-- Michael Shook 09/7/21

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