Running Computers In The Basement Without Fear Of Water

[duby229]

Also if you problems with the sump pump running a lot after a storm it's usually because the spouting isn't channeling water away from the foundation. I solved that problem in my circumstance by ading an additional length spouting to the bottom of each downspout to direct the water away from the house. Now the sump pump hardly ever comes on.

[Tomin]

Firefox doesn't show the images in this article. Their urls return the following error, if I try to open them separately over https:

An error occurred during a connection to www.phoronix.net. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. Error code: SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG

If I add "http:" to image src-attributes, then they work just fine.

[Elv13]

Phoronix images are not displaying in the latest Firefox beta due to a certificate error

An error occurred during a connection to www.phoronix.net. SSL received a record that exceeded the maximum permissible length. Error code: SSL_ERROR_RX_RECORD_TOO_LONG

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[makitso]

torsionbar28, The Tripp Lite model is APS750. I bought all the cables and battery box on Amazon. Were moving soon to Arizona and the unit will be used as a UPS.

As several posters noted, an alarm is fine but what protects against water? Last summer we had a very heavy rain and then the power went out. The sump pump had been running about every 45 seconds. Well, I bailed water from the sump for 4 hours until the power came on. THAT is the reason for the battery backup I noted on my first post :-) I looked at pump specific backup solutions but chose a converter instead thinking that in the future (soon) it will be used as a UPS solution.

[Michael]

I don't see anywhere that this has been addressed, but how about rather than sump overflowing, have you thought about *sewer backups*? That is where most significant DEPTH of basement flooding originates (aside from complete stupidity, like houses built on flood plains). An inch of water on the floor will dampen the wheels (feet?) of your racks. 4 feet of sewer backup will ruin *everything*.

As older single family homes on 50-60 foot lots get replaced with 15-foot-wide-townhouses and condo buildings (typically main streets), the older shit pipes tend to get overwhelmed. Add a nice spring storm into the mix and you have a bad situation threatening to go backwards into your basement.

Now there are a couple of ways of dealing with this; first is a one-way valve on the shit pipe as it exits the house. Unfortunately, there are places where this may not be LEGAL, so next up is option #2, which is to dig a sump near the building exit. You stick a tee into the sump and a one-way valve on the inside-side of the tee. If the sewer backs up, it blows out the tee into the sump, and in the sump, you have a... really big pump, that blasts out the front of your house onto the street. While it might be slightly bending the law to have a shit shooter on the front of your house, reality is that you can deal with that legality when it becomes a nuisance to somebody.

I'm not aware of any sewer backups in this area... Never had one at least. All of the houses in this subdivison/neighborhood are ~20 years old and prior to that it just used to be farm land and thus all modern piping.

[Michael]

torsionbar28, The Tripp Lite model is APS750. I bought all the cables and battery box on Amazon. Were moving soon to Arizona and the unit will be used as a UPS.

As several posters noted, an alarm is fine but what protects against water? Last summer we had a very heavy rain and then the power went out. The sump pump had been running about every 45 seconds. Well, I bailed water from the sump for 4 hours until the power came on. THAT is the reason for the battery backup I noted on my first post :-) I looked at pump specific backup solutions but chose a converter instead thinking that in the future (soon) it will be used as a UPS solution.

Aside from the sump pump solution mentioned earlier in this thread, the benefit of the alarm is that I do have a portable pump I can connect to garden hose and run, if basement were to begin flooding and I hear the alarm.

[Deavir]

I use 2 sump pumps at different levels and a natural gas generator that comes on in case of power outage. Suprised no one is using the wifi dlink water sensors or something like it. Was recently looking at investing in something for the basement as pumps do fail, even two.

[boxie]

Basements are typically for cold climates in areas where bedrock is not at surface level. Their structural purpose is to connect the building's foundation down below the frost line. If you don't do that, then when the ground freezes, the house will shift all over the place and crumble. Their "comfort" purpose is to insulate or heat the floor.

Now you could also do that with columns hooking from the house down to the footing, but if you're going to go to the trouble of digging it out to pour the footing (which is below the frost line), then you might as well use the space.


Construction techniques are different everywhere in order to suit the particular climate. One of my places is in an area that mandates that all houses are built up on columns at least 10 feet off the ground. This is to give a space for water to flow under them in case of a storm surge

Well there you go. thanks for sharing! There are not too many places down under that get cold enough to worry about a frost line