• Cost: $90+tax (Pump $50, Heavy Duty Extension Cord $40)
• Yield: Years of Effortless Water Transfer
• Money Saved: Money is Time, right?

 

Caution: banking Dripcoin is addictive. Not like stealing, because no one owns the rain,  and not like gambling because there’s no risk. It is more like a drug addiction where the only relief is to find more.

Some rainy winter nights I would slip silently from our warm bed, don foul weather gear and a headlamp, and emerge into the beautiful wet world of the garden to transfer water. I still miss those days. Instead of lulling me to sleep, the sound of rain caused me to spring into happy action. Afterward in the wee hours of the morning I would lie awake aflush with the excitement of new ideas.

One night I fell asleep wondering “How can I transfer water faster and easier?” At the time I was syphoning the water using a spare hose. This is so easy and everyone should know how to use a syphon. It’s not super fast, and requires a little rigging to empty each barrel, but it’s fun and free if you own a hose! But when I awoke that morning I decided to buy my very own sump pump.

Fairfax Lumber & Hardware Company, one of my favorite hardware stores, sold me this beauty:

The Ace Oil-Free Submersible Multi-Purpose Pump cost me just under $50 plus tax.  “Oil-Free” means the motor is enclosed and won’t leak oil into whatever you’re pumping. This is necessary to harvesting clean, unpolluted water. It’s also light and easy to use. An ordinary hose screws right to the top. Drop it into a barrel of water and plug it in and the water shoots out the other end of the hose like a madman! When it’s done, you hear the sound of empty, gurgly sucking like the end of a milkshake. It doesn’t hurt the pump, but you should disconnect it so it doesn’t burn out. I caught it late a couple of times, having left the garden to heat up a leftover burrito, now that I had, um, extra time.

Having your very own sump pump makes you a more powerful person. It’s like having jumper cables for your car, or a truck with a winch. Sometimes people “need a guy” with a pump. You can be that guy. It feels good.

I also bought a 50′ heavy duty extension cord for about $40. This was necessary to make the pump work wherever the water was, which was far from an outlet. To move water more than 50′, I had to pump twice; once to a halfway spot, and then again to the final storage spot. Fun.