A friend of mine has been in his house for 6 months and just noticed an odd configuration with his hot water heater. On the cold supply side going into the heater there is a ball valve with a drain. The drain is on the hotwater heater side of the valve. Attached to the drain plug on the ball valve is some copper tubing that runs down to the floor drain. From this tubing a small but steady trickle of water runs into the sump. The sump pump then periodically clears the water.
This has been steadily and constantly draining water into his sump. Why would someone do this?
See attached picture of the ball valve with drain and the tubing attached.
Thanks in advance,
Drew
Replies
Someone owns stock in the water company, maybe?
I could see that maybe someone would install something like this as a "trap filler", but that doesn't make sense with a sump pump. Or maybe it's a (rather crummy) attempt to deal with back pressure due to a check valve or PRV on the water service.
That's so you can use the sump pit as a self flushing urinal.
As Dan said, it sounds like trap filler, a very common setup.
Are you sure that this floor drain heads to the sump? Usually it wouldn't. Floor drains are usually considered part of the sewage system and therefore require a trap that needs to be kept full.
Is it possible that the trickling you hear into the sump is coming from other sources? (ground and roof water)
Like one of the other posts said it could be a home made trap primer. What is confusing is that a floor drain dosen't need a trap when it's run to the sump pump, has any one looked to see if there is a trap down there? The bad thing about the hook up is you can waste a lot of water with that thing running all the time,