Tornado!

As we were driving south on I-55 from Chicago, IL today, we saw a tornado near Dwight. Luckily, we were a few miles south when it formed. Here is a report from the local newspaper with a few pictures. I haven't heard any reports of anyone being injured, but there was a lot of property damage. It was odd that as we took the picture, the weather where we were was bright and sunny, but this terrible storm was forming just a couple miles north.



Here is the video we took.

Water powered sump pump installation pictures

In my last post, I mentioned I decided to have a water powered backup sump pump installed.
These two pictures are looking up at the pump in the rafters from below. In the picture on the left, you can see the two 90 degree bends in the discharge pipe that create the back pressure that allows the pump to operate. In the picture on the right, you can see the 1" copper water pipe entering the pump.


The picture on the left shows the installation in the sump pit. You can see the yellow float through the hole in the center of the cover. The device on the floor is a 9V battery powered water alarm. This is what alerted me that the main pump failed. The picture on the right shows the discharge pipe outside the house. I chose this to prevent any issues in the event of a plugged main discharge pipe