Triple Safe

[derekgaddy]

I have a Triple Safe system w/ iceguards that was installed in Nov. 09 My primary ice guard is "iced" up from the spray that comes from pumping the water. This can't be normal. I'm concerned that if I have a backup in my pipe the water will not be able to get thru the iceguard. If the water can't get out I assume my secondary pump will kick on and the water will get out thru the secondary iceguard?

[Charlene Bieber]

Hi derekgaddy,

This is another thing I'd like to trouble shoot with the dealer in regards to your other post, I'm wondering if it's somehow related.

[derekgaddy]

I emailed the dealer but haven't heard back. I will call them shortly. On another note...the other day we had heavy heavy rain for 24 hours. We lost electricty for about 4 hours- my triple pump worked great. I have two batteries for the backup. The first hour or two the backup was going off every minute or so- the final two hours I would say it was going off every 20 seconds. Finally the electricity came back on and my primary pump took care of the pumping.

It took about an hour for the battery to recharge- my question is how many more hours do you think i would have gotten out of the primary battery before it kicked over to the second battery? And for clarification- while the second battery does the pumping doesn't the first battery recharge?

I'm asking all these questions because i'm finishing my basement shortly and want piece of mind :)

[Charlene Bieber]

That's great to hear!

Let me explain how the 2 battery option works. You have a battery "switcher" installed and what this does is when you are on battery back up power, it will take from one battery first and after a certain percentage of depletion, it switches to the second battery. This way, you get the most juice possible out of each battery.

The same goes for recharging the batteries, it alternates. It is possible, that for those 4 hours you did not deplete very much juice from battery #1 and may not have switched over to battery #2 at all. When recharging, it'll do a rapid charge on one battery at first and then slow down. (The batteries are not able to recharge until the power is restored.)

To say how much time you would have left is tough, but in gallons - on two batteries - you should be able to pump out about 20,000 gallons of water before the batteries die.

To really try and break it down, for the first two hours the UltraSump (http://www.basementsystems.com/sump-pump/ultrasump.html) Pump ran about a total of 8 minutes (as it kicks on for 4 seconds at a time) and a total of about 24 minutes for the last 2 hours - so 32 minutes total run time. At 2000 gallons per hour, you probably pumped out around 1000 gallons of water in that 32 minute total run time. You could have pumped out another 18,000 - 19,000 gallons or so!

One thing to keep in mind is that the batteries, like any batteries, DO deplete slightly over the years, even if not used, so we suggest replacing them every 3 years to be safe.