Cistern & Croft Pump Room · Tarnmoor & the Weepwater flats · Basement mechanicals since 2009
The wall was fixed once. The pump is what keeps it fixed.
Every dry basement on the flats stands on a mechanical room nobody thinks about until two in the morning: a sump, a pump, a check valve, a battery, an alarm. Cistern & Croft is the crew that thinks about it for a living — installing, servicing and retrofitting the machinery of dry, on a service ledger your insurer would frame.
Freeze-up season on the Weepwater flats: a discharge line that exits above grade will freeze in January and dead-head the pump against ice. Season checks run to the end of November: (555) 034-6148.
What the pump room is
The mechanical half of a dry basement
Waterproofing and plumbing contractors each touch one piece of this and walk away. We are the piece in between — the basin, the pumps, the valves, the alarms, the dehumidifier and the air — kept on a ledger, tested on a calendar, and woken at two in the morning by a text message instead of by you.
The Season Check
$145per visit, spring & fall
- Both pumps cycle-tested on float, not by ear
- Check valves and foot valves exercised
- Discharge inspected to its outfall
- Alarm fired on mains and on battery
- Dehumidifier coil washed and dial set
Ledger entry with every reading, every visit.
The Dry Ledger
$240a year, two visits in
- Spring and fall Season Checks
- Emergency response inside four hours
- Parts at cost, labour at plan rate
- Battery replaced in its fourth year, free
- The ledger PDF — yours, and the next owner’s
Transfers with the house, warranty intact.
The Retrofit
from $1,240one time, on any basin
- Battery-backed secondary on its own float
- High-water alarm that texts two phones
- Sealed, gasketed lid — radon-tight
- Cast-iron primary, properly rated
- Generator transfer plug, labelled
Turns a pump into a system in one working day.
Installed, posted rates
The parts card
Same card clipped inside every basin lid we service — the one the emergency tech reads by phone light at two in the morning, so the part that fits is the part on the truck.
Cast-iron primary pump, ½ HP$680 fitted
Sized to the basin and the head, not the shelf
Battery secondary & charger$540 fitted
Own float, own battery, own switch — independence by design
High-water text alarm$210 fitted
Two numbers, sounds locally, texts when you are away
Basin rebuild & sealed lid$940
Relined, gasketed, radon-tight, vented where required
Buried discharge, re-run$18 / lin ft
Below frost to daylight or street, with clean-out
Whole-home dehumidifier$1,480 fitted
Sized to the volume, drained to the basin, dial set
The ledger method
How a service visit runs
Fifty minutes, the same five stations, readings into the ledger before the van door closes — the visit is a measurement that happens to include maintenance, not the other way round.
Read the history
Last visit’s ledger entries open on the clipboard before the lid comes off — cycle counts since spring tell more about a pump than its nameplate does.
Test on floats
Basin filled with the municipal feed to the real trip level, both pumps run on their own switches, amp draw read and compared — a pump that runs but labours is flagged while it is still a part, not a flood.
Exercise the plumbing
Check valves proven with a held column, the discharge traced to its outfall, the buried line flushed against frost, the outfall cleared of the mulch, ice and turf that silence systems quietly.
Fire the alarms
The high-water sensor lifted on purpose, on mains and on battery, and the confirmation text awaited on the spot — an alarm that has never been fired is a rumour.
Write the entry
Every reading into the ledger, the lid sealed, the PDF on its way to your inbox, and next season’s date on the calendar before the van starts.
The flats, 2025 — 2026
Rooms nobody photographs — almost
Six pump rooms from last season’s ledger. Beauty is a relative term in a mechanical room; these are ours anyway.
The pump that came with the house ran nine years and died in the March storm, and the “waterproofing” company that installed it had no record of it. Cistern & Croft had the retrofit in the same week and the ledger running from day one. This spring the alarm texted me from a hotel in another province — the battery pump had handled it before I finished reading.
Our listing was failing on a “damp basement” note from the buyer’s inspector. The sellers’ ledger from this firm — two seasons of cycle tests, valve checks, alarm firings — turned the note into a paragraph about maintenance. The sale closed on the first pass, and the buyers asked if the plan transfers. It does.
Forty minutes after my two-in-the-morning call a tech was on the floor beside me with the right check valve on the truck, because the card clipped to the lid said what was in the basin. He fired the alarm before he left so I would trust it. That is the entire review.
Why two pumps — is one not enough?
One pump is enough until the night the power quits, the float sticks or the impeller jams — and the storm that causes the first is the same storm that causes the others. A primary on mains and a secondary on its own battery and its own float means any single part can fail on the worst night of the year and the floor stays dry. The alarm is the third pump, in a sense: the one that wakes a person.
What does the sealed lid actually do?
Three things: it stops radon and soil gas coming through an open basin, it stops the pump humidifying the basement continuously, and it quiets the check valve’s thump to a furniture-moving instead of a door-slamming. On the flats we consider it the single best hour of any retrofit.
How long does a sump pump live?
Six to ten years on a decent cast-iron unit, and the ledger’s cycle counts tell us where yours sits — pumps die by cycles, not calendars. We flag a labouring unit at a spring check and replace it on the fall one, which is why no system we install and service has ever flooded a floor.
Do you service systems other companies installed?
Most of our ledger is exactly that. The retrofit plan applies to any basin — we rebuild, label and card it, and from that visit forward it is ours to know and yours to forget. The one thing we will not do is service a system nobody will let us test properly; an untestable system is a decorative one.
What happens to the dehumidifier in winter?
It keeps running, because the basement’s moisture load barely notices the season — it drops maybe a third, and the soil-side load never sleeps. The drain to the basin means nobody empties a bucket, the dial stays where we set it, and the coil gets washed at both checks so the machine keeps earning its electricity.
The number that answers
Answered by a person who knows your basin’s name, forty-two minutes median inside the flats, and the card clipped to every lid means the right part is on the truck before it rolls. duty@cisterncroft.example
The ledger, in figures
Season checks to the end of November · emergencies answered at all hours · (555) 034-6148 · duty@cisterncroft.example
Open the ledger
Basement age, what the pump does in a storm, and the last time anybody looked at it. Retrofit visits happen within the week, season checks run to the calendar, and the first entry is free with any work. duty@cisterncroft.example