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Yesterday our 80 gallon water heater (less than 5 years old) ruptured - flooding our basement. Situated right next to the water heater is our sump - but it didn't do 1 ounce of its job, because it is sealed for radon remediation.

Any suggestions on how I can achieve both water drainage into a sump plus radon remediation?

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  • The job of the sump is to move ground water away from the structure, not to drain water from a ruptured water tank. – Tester101 Sep 18 '14 at 3:56
  • I neglected to mention that our basement has also been drenched twice before, for completely different reasons. So I wish our sump was serving as a sump, rather than not serving as a sump. That's the motivation for my question. – Dave Clausen Sep 18 '14 at 16:32
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Put a surface pump at the lowest portion of the basement? That should keep the flood down to an inch or so; not perfect but better.

(You could build up some sort of basin around the mechanicals so they have their own "sump" sitting on top of the slab... but Murphy's Law says that the next failure is going to be somewhere else in the system.)

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I learned that there's such a thing as a "Leak Alert Electronic Water Detector" (inexpensive). So at least I can be alerted if the water heater ruptures again. I just ordered one.

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Have you thought about using a Radon Fan for radon mitigation instead? My basement had 13 pCi/L radon level with open sump pit, and after installing radon fan in attic, it went to 0.6 pCi/L, and my sump pit is wide open all the time.

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