I am pretty clueless on this subject, please bear with me.
This is probably a stupid question, I’m just trying to figure out whether I need to call a plumber to check my sump pump.
We had a couple rainy days and sump pump was running quite often. Quit raining, but a storm came through and knocked our electric out for over a day. The sump pump was running every 20 minutes when the electric went out. I was worried, of course that it was going to flood, no battery back up. Well the good news is it didn’t flood. It never overflowed despite the electric being off for over a day. As soon as the electric came back on. It started running again. Going off every hour, despite no rain. The weather turned much colder and we got snow, but the temperature was only in the teens and 20s, so there was no snow melt, but the sump pump continued to go off about every hour for the next several days. Now the snow is melting and it’s going off every 15 minutes.

This just does not seem right to me. Why didn’t it overflow when the electricity was off if it needs to run so often? Could it be the check valve not functioning right? I do hear it shutting off. I really don’t know a lot about it and just needed some advice whether to call a plumber before we get a bunch of rain here this weekend.
The sump pump is in a cement crawlspace, I am disabled and cannot get down there to look at it myself, even if I knew what I was doing, which I don’t.
I did check outside where it drains out, and water is coming out, whether it as much as it’s supposed to be, I don’t know. It looks like a couple gallons to me, maybe more, hard to tell. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Edited to add- I don’t know if this means anything, but pump runs 5-6 seconds when it cycles.



Edited 3 times.

Adjusting the pump so that it only turns on when the water level is higher might prevent it from coming on so frequently. Perhaps there is a water table in the soil under the house that is stable at a certain level. The pump should only be pumping out water when the water rises above this stable level and not trying to pump out this water table.

Usually, a check valve is mounted on the output of the pump. If the check valve fails, water remaining in the line can drain back into the sump leaving the level in the sump just below the trigger point of the switch. This will make the pump run much more frequently as it has to pump the same water back out multiple times.
Also, problems with roof gutter downspouts can cause a lot of extra water around the foundation making the pump run more during and just after a rain.

Thanks for your response. That did occur to me.
Do you think there’s any chance that I’m getting some backflow? I did hear on one occasion water trickling into the sump pit. Is that normal?

A small amount of backflow is inevitable. The volume of backflow should be insubstantial compared with the volume of water pumped out during each cycle, certainly under 10%. The further away from the pump the check valve is installed, the more backflow you will get.