Hi,
I was helping to remove about 1/2″ of standing rainwater from a basement in a house that is under construction. The basement was about 1500 sf. There is no floor drain or sump pit.
What we did was to set up a shop vac outside, run the hose through the window, through the handle of a weighted down 5-gal pail, and then set the nozzle of the vac on two little shims so that it set about 1/8″ above the floor. Then, we put two 2x4s in the shape of a vee, with the point of the vee right at the vac nozzle. Using snow shovels, we encouraged the water into the vee. It worked great, especially once we set up the 2×4 vee to direct the water towards the nozzle.
The only problem was that we had to keep stopping every few minutes to turn off the vac and open the drain plug. I was hoping for some suggestions on how to make the shop vac act more like a sump pump and operate continuously without having to stop and drain. Merely running the vac with the drain open did not work, the vac just wants to suck air in through the drain hole. A sump pump was not really an option because the water was very shallow.
Thanks for any ideas!
Alec
Replies
My shop vac has a drain on the bottom. It wouldnt exactly operate like a sump, but as long as the water in the tank stayed above the drain hole (to maintain vacuum) you could keep the machine running without having to keep draining the tank.
We tried that, but since the vacuum was sucking water off the floor about 4' below the drain plug, the path of least resistance was to suck air in through the drain plug rather than water up the 4' of hose.
Break down and buy a real pump. You can buy a cheapie sump pump, or something like a small Wayne centrifugal pump. Or, you can maybe find a small vane pump sans motor and power it with a drill (drill press works best).
happy?
Can you recommend a type of pump that will suck 1/2" of water off a floor and pump it out the window? I thought that most pumps for that application would need to have a sump pit or deeper water to work with.
wonder if this would workput the picture in a folder namedFloyd's Pond Vacum_filesthen open with browsercame accross this for my pond
bobl Volo, non valeo
Baloney detecter
Some pumps come with a hose end (I think they call it a "frog") that will pick up down to about 1/2", or you can generally devise something. Worst case just hook the pump up to the vac hose.
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
get you a cheap sump pump and attach a hose to it. sit it inside your vac and either drill a hole or use your drain hole to exit hose.seal around the hose pretty well and start vacuming,you'll never stop to drain.have fun been there done that. larry
hand me the chainsaw, i need to trim the casing just a hair.
how about a flap valve on the botom of the vacum that gets sucked closed by the vacum when it is turned on and when the vacum is turnd off the preasure of the water forces it open
put a timer on the vacum to turn it on and off at regular intervals
saw some roofers useing a trailer mounted vacum to remove the gravel from a roof this way' every time the vacum would stop the gravel would drop onto a truck below the cyclone
Around here I've seen them use an old snowblower to pick up the gravel. (Wear ear protection!)
If ignorance is bliss why aren't more people
happy?
There are all kinds of utility pumps that will go down to 1/8" or less.
Here is one.
http://www.lgpc.com/Product/ItemDetail.aspx?ProductID=404
I wonder if one of those garbage can lids for dust collection systems would work.
Then you could let both the garbage can AND the shop vac fill up before you stopped to empty them.
Not continuous, but better 'n nothing...
You can get a shop vac with a built in pump that connects to a garden hose
http://www.shopvac.com/web/products/list.asp?hdnSource=index&Browse=pump
Jeff