During the winter of 2024, two back-to-back storms plummeted the Maine coastline. The Penobscot Bay Pilot covered these storms in the following two articles:
January 10, 2024 and January 13, 2024
Both of these storms were co-oincident with January king tides, tides during a new or full moon.
This is a great summary article of storm details by Thornton Tomasetti.
On a calm sun filled day, the king tides slowly inch there way up the shoreline and occasional drool into a low area parking lot, a coastal walk way, or into the low areas of an ocean front home backyard. During a winter full gale storm, there is a completely different dynamic and the storm surge rises well above the king tide level and pummels anything and everything on the coast. This is exactly what happened on January 10th and 13th of 2024.
Multiple coastal businesses were flooded and severely damaged. A local business had some basement flooding, but fortunate to have been able to pump out the water and restore all of the systems that were damaged.
With everything back to normal, the owner took steps to fortify the property and one step toward this was to install a sump pump that would be able to keep up with the storm surge. This project was the result of this effort.
A high volume pump was selected that would be able to pump out the entire volume of the basement in under an hour. This rate would be ample enough to keep up with a king tide storm surge which over an hour span would attempt to fill the basement.
The Speroni HGM 80-2.2 Trash Water Pump is a self-priming, 3HP, monoblock, trash water pump. It has a maximum flow of 15840 GPH and suitable to drain clean or slightly dirty water and can even be used in a flood irrigation system.
This pump met the requirement because the basement volume was about 15,000 gallons if full, so the GPH rate matched perfectly. The final installation included a switch control to turn it on manually or with the use of a high level float switch. A final component (check valve) was needed to hold the prime so that it would be ready to pump at a moments notice. The manual switch can be used to test the pump weekly.
Maine – April 2024
Nautico Star 