Junk in my sump

Sometimes when you have an old house, you spend the first 75-degree day of spring in a dark corner of your basement because your sump pump’s busted. And if you can’t manage to derive at least a sliver of satisfaction from this thankless repair task, you’ll end up wearing a straightjacket and a drool bib in no time.

Our basement has two sump pits. There are no obvious water issues, but it’s nice to know that if we find ourselves in the eye of the next Atlantic hurricane I won’t have to pull out my pool noodle in order to make my way around down there. Week-to-week, the sump pits collect waste water from the washing machine and utility sink and pump it into the main sewer line.

After running a load of laundry last week, I noticed a puddle of bubbly overflow adjacent to one of the pits, a sure sign that the pump wasn’t working. I rolled up my sleeves, fished the pump out of the soapy water and found that it was hopelessly clogged with debris. When the boiler was removed last month, it left an unholy mess of rust scale, dirt and oil in its trail. I suspect that a good amount of this detritus found its way into the uncovered sump pit where it was sucked in to the pump, eventually causing it to seize.

To prevent the new pump from suffering the same fate, I fetched my Shop Vac and make quick work of the water and sludge at the bottom of the sump.

Next, I assembled the discharge plumbing to the new pump, a slightly more powerful model made of cast iron and aluminum rather than plastic. The black plastic cage strapped to the PVC pipe is a vertical switch that activates the pump when a little float inside it gets pushed up by rising water. The dead pump had a tethered switch which is similar to the floating ball you’ve seen in your toilet tank. Because the sump is small, that switch had a tendency to get caught on the sides of the pit, causing the pump to activate later than it should have. The vertical switch can’t get snagged, so it should be more reliable. The brass fitting is a check valve that keeps pumped water from flowing back into the pit once the motor clicks off.

The plumbing assembly is topped by a threaded bushing that connects to the existing flexible discharge pipe. The end product looks straightforward, but even with years of DIY plumbing under my belt, I rarely manage to pull off a plumbing project with fewer than three trips to the hardware store. I think this was a four-tripper.

To test the pump, I dumped a five-gallon bucket of water into the sump and it disappeared as quickly as I could pour it. I’d be delighted to not to think about this pit ever again – or at least for a very long time.

I did manage to salvage the afternoon to enjoy the weather and admire the early-spring flowers blooming around the yard. These hellebores have been putting on a show for several weeks and don’t show any signs of letting up.

Voxer Enables Push-to-Talk Feature on Smartphones

In industrial and construction settings, sometimes a push-to-talk (PTT) capability normally associated with a “Walkie Talkie” makes a whole lot more sense than a traditional smartphone. The challenge is that giving workers access to such dedicated communications devices is not only fairly expensive, the workers themselves usually already have their own smartphones and wind up carrying around two devices.

Looking to combine the best of both a dedicated communications device and a smartphone, Voxer this week added a “Walkie Talkie” mode to the application it developed for smartphones, which converts them into PTT devices.

Voxer President Irv Remedios says that once the Voxer app is downloaded onto a smartphone, it allows users to talk to each other using their smartphones in PTT mode. Via the app, they also can now listen to messages and receive and respond to them in real time without having to keep the Voxer app open on the phones. Users can also receive read receipts so they know if their messages have been checked. Messages can also be forwarded to other users.

In addition, Remedios says the new release supports a much broader range of headsets, including earbuds from Apple.

PTT has been around for a long time now. The issue is that previous instances of PTT were limited to a service provided by a specific carrier. By turning PTT into an application that is priced at $9.95 per month per user, Voxer is making PTT universally available on all smartphones over any carrier or wireless network. That application can also be integrated with any single sign-on (SSO) capability that an organization already has in place.

Ruggedized devices still may make more sense than smartphones for some industries. But for many businesses, those devices are merely an overly expensive method to solve a communications problem. Thanks to the Voxer app, many companies will likely save money by purchasing the app for existing smartphones, instead.