To preface, for those who don’t know, I am the maintenance guy for a camp and retreat center in rural northeast Iowa.
The VFD for the main sewer lift pump decided to die today… out of nowhere. We don’t have a spare although we probably should. So a new one is on order but we had no sewage, so we got out a spare pump, intended for the new RV sites, and put that in… very sketchily.
The old pump that’s normally in the pit is a 2hp, 3 phase beast.
What we rigged up is a 1hp, 115v pump.
SOMEHOW it pumped the 30+ foot head up to the septic tank farther up the hill (we are in a valley). Despite having half the power and little torque from being single phase.
These two pumps are both made by Liberty Pumps, here in the US. And man do they make a good product. Pricey, but worth every cent. We have tried everything over the years, from cheap Chinese junk to nicer Zoeller brand pumps, and Liberty’s units always are more reliable and last longer.
All of this to say, buy American when you can, you get what you pay for, especially when you’re running something way over its intended use case.