Sump Pump Systems in Amarillo, TX

Every drain needs lower ground to empty onto. On some Amarillo lots there is none: the soggy corner is already the low point, and the street, the alley, and the neighbors all sit higher. A sump system collects the water in a pit and pushes it up and out with a pump.

Playa country

Amarillo was platted in 1887 on a section of land that held a large playa known as Amarillo, or Wild Horse, Lake, according to the Handbook of Texas. Playas are everywhere up here. The Handbook counts about 19,000 of them on the southern High Plains of Texas, averaging nearer 600 basins per county, and notes that each one drains its own small, closed watershed with no stream carrying water in or out.

The soil on a playa floor is a different animal from the surrounding plain. The USDA's Randall series, mapped on those floors, is poorly drained and very slowly permeable, sits 10 to 50 feet below the surrounding plain, and is frequently ponded for very long periods in most years. A house on the slope above one of those basins can sit on the path water takes downhill.

The city pumps too

The City of Amarillo's drainage utility maintains several city-owned playa lakes used to store stormwater runoff and runs several stormwater pump stations that remove water from low-lying areas. If the city needs pumps to empty its low ground, it is no surprise that some backyards do as well.

How a system goes together

1. Find the true low point. We watch where water stands and take elevations, because a pit placed six feet off the low spot sits dry while the puddle forms beside it.
2. Set the basin. A perforated pit surrounded by clean stone, deep enough to collect from the wet layer and from any French drain or catch basin lines feeding it.
3. Install the pump. A float switch turns it on when the pit fills and off when it empties.
4. Add a check valve. It keeps water already pushed up the discharge line from falling back into the pit.
5. Run the discharge. Solid pipe to daylight on another part of the lot, or to the street where the city signs off on it, far enough away that the water does not just seep back into the very spot it came from.

Backup power is an option

The National Weather Service describes Amarillo's warm-season thunderstorms as capable of large hail, lightning, and damaging wind, along with very heavy rain. Those are the same storms that fill a sump. Where a pump is protecting a foundation or a garage, a battery backup unit that can carry the pump through an outage is worth discussing. On lower-stakes yards it may not be.

Winter and the discharge line

Freezing weather in Amarillo runs, on average, from about October 20 to about April 18, according to the NWS. Any discharge line that holds water through that stretch can freeze at the outlet and split a fitting. We lay the line so it drains back or empties between cycles, and we keep the outlet where you can see it and clear it.

When a pump is the wrong answer

• Gravity is available. If some corner of your lot drops below the soggy area, a gravity drain with no moving parts is the better fix, and we will tell you that.
• The basin is the playa itself. A residential pump cannot drain a playa that fills from a whole neighborhood. If your back fence sits on one, the job is protecting the house, not emptying the basin.
• The water is surface sheet flow. Water running off a neighbor's lot is often better handled with regrading or a swale than with a pit and pump.