Oy, I am glad those days are over for me with “our old house” projects. We used to have a sump pump in the old Michigan basement and every now and then it would go on the fritz. We had some minor flooding, pit was full of water and me trying to free up the pump. Big shock came up my arm, fortunately my hand released on its own. I was sure Menards would take it back.
Yeah, part of my lab is in the basement and the capacitors in those darn sump pumps fail often, too, or the impeller jams on a bit of debris getting in the pit, or, one time, we had a SNAKE get tangled up with the float switch! Talk about your unexpected problems! I have a battery back up pump too, but then you have to maintain the whole battery backup system and if you are “lucky” the bloody charger that came with the backup system won’t fail on you. I finally installed a water sensor about 2/3 up the pit (had to shield it in a plastic bottle as the pump requires a little vent hole in the exit pipe, and the spray would set off the alarm.) The alarm came with only a 7 ft. wire from the unit itself to the sensor element, but it turns out some 18 ga. speaker wire spliced in allows a long extension — I actually tested it with 200 ft. of 20 gauge wire, and then for the actual installation I ran about 50 ft. of 18 ga. Works like a champ. Just gotta check the battery in the alarm every several months. (Like tomorrow, when I get home, now that I think about it!) Damages aside, fighting a dead or jammed sump pump in an already flooded basement is NO fun, I can relate on that one!
I have a cutoff for electricity to the sump pump mounted well above it, and IF I have water in the basement I can easily flip the breakers to all basement circuits: Just flip the ones for everything except the lights on the ceiling.