Serendipity... or engineering by accident

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JR.
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Serendipity... or engineering by accident

Post by JR. »

Did you ever have a plan work out way better than you expected?

I live on a low plot of land, bottom of a hill with front and back rain ditches. It is easy to see a lot of water flow through my area when it rains hard, and the crawl space under my house gets so much water in it that I have a sump pump to pull the water out. Usually I just run a short 25' hose from the pump straight across my back yard toward my back rain ditch. After last weekend's storm (2"+) I decided to attach another section of hose to the sump output to route the water around to my front ditch that drains better/lower.

I use an old cooking pot to prop up the end of the hose so I can see from a distance that water is still coming out. I can usually hear cavitation when the pump under my house first pulls air, but if it is completely dry i can't hear that.

Then we had another serious rain... this one overflowed my rain gauge, an old wide mouth pint milk/cream bottle I sit out in my driveway. That bottle is 5" tall so more than 5" of rain in 24 hours. There was enough rain that my old cooking pot got washed away in the deluge. :oops: So the hose was now laying down near the bottom of the ditch.

I ran the sump pump roughly 12 hours for two days . I don't run it at night because I might not hear it finish and pull air. I was kind of surprised on morning three that when I turned it on, expecting ti to run for at least a few more hours and it pulled air almost immediately. My first though was that coincidentally it must have been almost finished when I turned it off the night before, Later I figured out what was really happening.

Since the pot that was propping up the end of the long hose had washed away, the end of the hose was apparently now lower than the water level in my crawl space, so even with the pump turned off, the hose acted like a siphon and continued to pull water from beneath my house. Despite the sump pump going almost immediately into cavitation, water continued to slowly siphon out for several more days.

Another project for my list was to design a controller for the sump pump that would detect the current draw difference between pulling water and pulling air to automatically shut it off... Now with the siphon action I can just let gravity finish the job.... :D

JR
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mediatechnology
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Re: Serendipity... or engineering by accident

Post by mediatechnology »

Another project for my list was to design a controller for the sump pump that would detect the current draw difference between pulling water and pulling air to automatically shut it off... Now with the siphon action I can just let gravity finish the job.... :D


That's very cool.
Roger is the expert on water distribution here.
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JR.
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Re: Serendipity... or engineering by accident

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I suspect the classic control approach is either a water level (float) or water present (contact) sensor, but I am thinking of just an automatic shut off. Something I can put in series with the pump line cord and detect the current draw difference from pulling water vs pulling air. It should only be a few amps tops, and enough of a difference to easily detect. No hurry, for now the siphon doesn't need a switch.

The sump pump only ran for about an hour this morning before noisily cavitating,so now it's in siphon mode and still moving a trickle of water.
======

My real problem is that when my house was built it was placed too low in the ground... I have built up dirt around the foundation, but the yard falls off and then rises again to get up to the rain ditch shoulder and then even higher up to the road surface. The road level should have been a hint for the builder. :roll:

I just dug a narrow 4" wide trench on saturday from the middle of where my yard turns into a lake every time it rains, to my front ditch (about 40'). The narrow trench is not a permanent solution but I want to see if it helps get the standing water out of my yard faster and reduces the water under my house.

We got a little over an inch of rain last night so my latest experiment was on... I had to spend about an hour this morning getting my trench deep enough to drain.. there is probably a 6" rise from the middle of my yard to the rain ditch shoulder. I really need to get a bulldozer in my yard to rearrange all the dirt. My next door neighbor who used to work for the state said I need a permit to work on my rain ditch because it's in the state hwy right of way... I'll worry about that bridge if/when I come to it.

Lake "front yard" is now slowly draining, so good progress. 8-) I will probably need another pass to keep the narrow trench flowing.

JR
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mediatechnology
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Re: Serendipity... or engineering by accident

Post by mediatechnology »

I think you'll find the current drain change to be predictable.

I recall a blocked filter circuit in a range hood that worked the same way.
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JR.
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Re: Serendipity... or engineering by accident

Post by JR. »

After seeing how much rise there is, I have abandoned any thought of regrading my entire lot, but bought a drain cache, and 50' of drain pipe that I am burying today. This should get a bunch of water out of my yard after it rains.

JR

[edit- when I thought I was near finished yesterday, a dropped a garden hose down into my trap to so how well I did... bzzt fail. :oops: While the top of the drain trap is level with the low spot in my yard, the outlet for the drain pipe is down a few more inches below that so my trench now needed to be several inches below the low spot in the yard... Using water in the trench as a level I finally have it close after a few more hours of digging on sunday. :(

Time to button this puppy up. The outlet is now well below the high water level for my rain ditch but that should be OK (?). I may point the outlet downstream so I don't pump water up into my yard when the ditch is flowing strong.. :lol: /edit]
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JR.
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Re: Serendipity... or engineering by accident

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Success I just ran a test with my garden hose,and the drain pulls down to the bottom of the 3" drain pipe, which is itself a few inches below yard level...Now I need to see if the outlet end stays clear over time... It is pretty low in my rain ditch. Lower than the bottom was before it was trenched out a few months ago by the state.

But for now its all good... I love it when a plan comes together. :D :D :D

JR
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Re: Serendipity... or engineering by accident

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The recent storm that killed about 15-20 people from tornados dropped about 2-1/2" of rain in only a few hours so gave my new rain drain system a proper test. After the rain stopped my yard was damp, but no more 2-3 inches of standing water. The drain worked. :D :D I noticed that the cover for the drain trap was moved a couple feet away. Perhaps when the rain ditch was flowing peak water volume, some water backed up the drain pipe?

I could probably come up with some kind of check valve for the drain pipe, but it does not seem worth the cost/complexity since the water moves back out of the yard soon enough. it seems I could make my own check valve with a rubber ball that blocks a hole for one flow direction...

I still need to think about adding gutters to move more rain water away from the house.

JR
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