Last night a powerful thunderstorm blasted
the city with a phenomenal downpour, lightning strikes and lots of wind. The
power went out for about an hour and a half and it represented the typical
summer power outage around here: storm leads to power loss for 10 minutes up to
several hours.
Your freezers and fridges should be okay for an hour and a half and you can
get by with flashlights if it happens to be dark; but what about your sump
pump?
If the outage is caused by a storm, you are likely to get a lot of water
pouring into your sump when the power is out. To deal with that, I installed a
backup battery powered sump pump. It is a Flotec
and uses a deep cycle battery to power a 12 V DC pump. 
You can see the backup pump on the right. You can see the water squirting out
of the weeping
hole.
To be prepared for power outages lasting several hours, I keep an extra car
battery in the garage and keep it charged. If the deep cycle battery in the
backup pump is exhausted, I can hook up the car battery.
My sump pumps last about 2 years, they usually die when the pump house bolts
break from being rusted, and water rushes into the electric motor part of the
pump. I keep a new pump right next to the sump to replace it when the old one
breaks; I also have a portable sewage pump for emergencies and a dehumidifier
that can dry out any rooms that get wet.
Yes, I'm clearly over-prepared for water issues in my basement. I have had two
of those emergencies and I don't want any more!
