Installing the Pump

Tuesday was the day we installed the pump. It was not a particularly smooth process. As the saying goes…

Measure once, Cuss twice. When I measured for the box I was planning on using a simple sheet of plywood for the walls, then halfway through building the box I decided to make them out of 2×8 instead, to withstand compression from dirt and fill from under the shop pad better, to prevent it from sliding out, which would cause the pad to sag and crack. Probably overkill, but seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, the added thickness made it too wide to fit between the shop and the pipe for the French drain.

Not terribly difficult to fix, just took the side off, trimmed it to fit in side rather than outside, and screwed it back on.

Note to self, if I ever do this again, don’t make the exit hole directly in line with the pump. Getting the pex line through it and clamped in that tight space was a royal pain.

Outflow from the pump is all set.

Clamping the last pinch clamp to hook up the inlet from the rain tank.

Priming the pump. This is a very important step.

Let’s take a quick break to repair the runoff pipe. We hit it with a pick when digging the trench. And this is why we don’t use back-hoes.

Good as new.

We glued insulation to the inside of the lid. Everything below the lid will be below ground, but the lid will be exposed. The last thing we need is for this pump to freeze and crack during one of our occasional winter cold snaps.

The lid is on the box.

Next, on Thursday we put in the junction box which will allow us to run water directly from the tank with a garden hose (in case we need to empty it while the pump is inoperable for any reason) and gives us access to the main shutoff for the tank itself.

Insulated all the pipe leading from the tank to the pump, and then buried it under 18-24 inches of dirt.

There is a second blue pex pipe running up out of the trench in the middle of the screen. This is a pipe that we put in while the trench was open as a “just-in-case.” That is, there are projects on the drawing board that might require us to run water from other sources under the driveway, e.g. harvesting from the barn roof as well as the shop. Rather than have to dig the trench up again, we just ran the extra 3/4″ Pex through the bottom of the trench as a second line that we can splice into from either end. Because hey, you never know, and we had the extra pipe (100′ roll was cheaper than a 50′ roll), so why not?

All that remains on this project is running electricity to the pump, and putting an inlet filter in the tank, in addition to the first-flow diverters, then we will be ready for inspection by Pierce County Conservation district.