The septic repair guys finally showed up with the new pump today. I don't think they really knew what they were doing because at one point the lead guy thought he was done and ready to leave. It was like when kids disassemble the family car and there are parts left over when they are done. In this case it was a float that gets plugged in. The float is the thing that tells the pump when to kick on because the basin has filled with water. Fortunately he decided to glance at the instructions before he left and recognized that the float might be needed.

So he had to go back down there through the manhole and cut through some PVC pipe and install the float. I'm not sure why the pipe had to be sawed through. He referred to 'check valve' which was another thing shown in the instructions, so maybe he realized he didn't do that right, either. Finally, he got all that hooked up but then the float was set too low so he had to go back in there and fix that, dropping his Leatherman tool into the sludge in the bottom of the basin. This required five minutes of feeling around until he found it. I was not asking too many questions about it.

Eventually we figured out that new pump works fine, but the electrical outlet where it gets plugged in is not working. You can probably imagine how many false steps there were before this was decided. Now I have an extension cord from my house into the manhole in my back yard, but at least my septic system is running at full capacity for the first time in weeks.

Since it was an electrical problem and maybe not the pump, the septic repair guy says he is going to clean up the old pump and if it runs good we can put it on the shelf as a backup. It will have to be pretty clean for me to look forward to getting it back, but these pumps cost about $600 so I guess it's a good idea.