Upgrading a French Drain Sump Pump to Handle Atmospheric River Rainstorms - Part 1

In recent years, California has been hit by a long series of atmospheric rivers of rain that overwhelmed the 1/3 HP sump pump we had installed in our French Drain. I had to install an additional temporary 1/3 HP pump to keep up.

So it was time for an upgrade. We picked a Liberty 1/2 HP sump pump with a magnetic float switch (I paid $295 in 2023). The previous pumps we've had (Little Giant: I paid $170 in 2021) used a diaphragm switch that would eventually fail after 5-7 years. We're hoping this Liberty pump lasts a lot longer.

The Liberty pump pulls 8 amps @ 1/2 HP while the Little Giant it replaced draws 9 amps @ 1/3 HP. So the new pump has higher HP and more GPM but uses less energy! Win-Win!

Part 1 covers removing the old pump and comparing it to the new one (unboxing included), vacuuming out the sump with my shop vac because even though we have gutter guards on our roof gutters, some leaves still get in there. It's a good idea to vacuum out your sump 1/year, installing the new pump and testing it.

Part 2 covers how the new pump did after the next two rainstorms that winter and doing the annual checking of the pump & sump this September. I also show how I shorted the outlet pipe which was necessary because the replacement pump outlet was about an inch higher off the ground.

NOTE: it's still working great today and we've never had any water under the house over the last 3 years even though we've had more atmospheric rivers!

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Link to part 1 of my video series about installing the Little Giant 1/3 HP pump that I replaced in this video with a 1/2 HP pump: https://youtu.be/aDoojk7IccQ

Link to Liberty Pumps 287 1/2 HP Submersible Sump Pump with VMF Switch on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000LE3SZ4

Link to the sump pump we replaced: (Little Giant GIDDS-521252 12393 1/3 HP Automatic Sump Pump, 2760 GPH) on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UEV8WA/?th=1

Link to my Etsy Store:
https://betacygnidesigns.etsy.com/
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Music:
"Blippy Trance" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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End Screen Video Acknowledgement: Cosmic Reef Video produced by NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI).
https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/videos/2020/16/1277-Video