Please help this chump quiet his sump pump.

March 22, 2016 7:06 PM

Noise from our sump pump is keeping us up at night. What can I do to get things quieter?

The sump pump is in the basement directly under our bedroom and almost directly under Mrs. VTX's head when she's sleeping and when it runs at night, the noise sometimes wakes her up.

I've already upgraded the plumbing once going to 2" (or maybe 1.5") PVC pipe and adding a one-way valve so that once the pump finishes pumping, the noise stops. The pipe is attached to the concrete block foundation around a foam insulation, makes two turns and then goes out through a hole in the joist. The sump well has a cover that appears to be made from left over sub-floor and there is a wonderful, silent check-valve that installed at the pump and the base of the pipe.

I'm pretty confident that it's louder in the bedroom than it is standing next to the well in the basement.

I really don't want to mess with the plumbing to much but I have some ideas for some minor upgrades that I think will help but I'm not sure if they'll work or what will have the most impact.

1. Cut out a section of pipe near the pump and install an expansion joint like this to keep vibrations from being transmitted up the pipe.

2. Stuff a bunch of sound insulating material like this between the joists around the pipe.

3. Do something to more firmly attach the pipe to the wall or use something different to insulate the pipe against the wall?

Will any/all of these help? is there anything else I can try? I'd rather avoid messing with the plumbing at the top as it has some spray foam insulation around it that would be difficult to deal with. Some pictures for reference: Picture 1, Picture 2

posted by VTX to Home & Garden (9 answers total)

How often does it run?

Is the cistern large enough to hold a night's worth of water? How about putting it on a lamp timer and only allowing it power from say 6am and midnight. This would give you 6 hours of no sump-pumping.
posted by bricksNmortar at 7:21 PM on March 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: The expansion joint isn't likely to help much. Even if you decouple the pump from the upper section of pipe, considerable vibration can be transmitted through the pressurized water during operation.

I'd make sure there are no hard/rigid points of contact between the pipe and the floor joists. The pump isn't going to vibrate the foundation, but it sure can vibrate a wooden floor structure.

You might also consider replacing the pump with a quieter model. They aren't all created equal.
posted by jon1270 at 7:45 PM on March 22, 2016

I've dealt with this.

You get a quieter pump. There's nothing else that really works, you just need a different pump. This might not even mean a more expensive one. This had been fucked with a lot by the owners at the place i was living.

When a doofus contractor pulled the pump at my old place then replaced it with tape on the float, so it ran until it burned out, we emergency bought the cheapest pump at home depot right before they closed that night. It was seriously less than half as loud as the old(and fairly expensive) pump. Amusingly, the cheap quiet pump lasted many years until the house was redone. It seriously looked like some sketchy piece of junk from harbor freight... but hey, quiet.
posted by emptythought at 7:48 PM on March 22, 2016

Also, put the bed on rubber blocks and keep it from touching the wall?
posted by clew at 8:36 PM on March 22, 2016

Nice thick rug under the bed should help.
posted by carsonb at 10:11 PM on March 22, 2016

I put mine on a timer so it doesn't run when I'm asleep. My house doesn't get so much water that the pump being off 8 hours is a problem.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 10:13 PM on March 22, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I've had this problem. The noise in my case was coming from the hole through the rim joist. Someone had drilled the hole just big enough to get a 1-1/2" pvc through it. it translated the pump vibration right to that joist miraculously well.

I took the pipe out of the joist, drilled a 2" hole, then lined the hole with some vibration damping neoprene I picked up off amazon. I also hung the pipe from another joist to support it more. Reduced the noise immensely.
posted by sanka at 8:17 AM on March 23, 2016

Response by poster: When stuff starts to thaw and/or it rains, the pump runs a lot. Enough that if didn't run during the night, our basement would have water by morning but a timer might do the trick for much of the winter and summer.

That the pump seems quieter when standing next to it than it does the room above makes me think Sanka's got it and the problem is where it's exiting through the joist. I'll start there.

Will more firmly securing the pipe to the wall help too?

Otherwise these are helpful suggestions so we'll end up taking an "all of the above" approach as long as the things I'm doing are all things that have an impact.
posted by VTX at 12:11 PM on March 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Fixed it!

I took the plumbing down and re-mounted it more firmly to the wall with some kind of neoprene and/or rubber tape. I also cut the hole where the pipe exits the house a bit bigger so that I could put some of that tape around the inside of the hole. And sealed off really well. I found a few other places where the plumbing came close to something else on it's way out (a pipe for the hose spigot that comes exits the house next to the sump pipe. Oh, I also moved the float switch to be higher up so that the sump pump itself is always submerged. The well is deep enough that I could do that and still have a LOT of room before the basic overflows.

I'm not sure if it was any one thing that did the trick or if was a combination of everything together but something worked and that's good enough to sleep through the night.

I'm happy to report that the noise is GREATLY reduced. It can now only faintly be heard in the bedroom and even then only if everything else is totally silent. We're still looking for a rug that we like and we're going to put something on the bed's feet to dampen vibrations but we're well into "good enough" territory already so anything else that helps is just gravy.

Thanks everyone!
posted by VTX at 5:49 AM on March 31, 2016 [1 favorite]