Liberty Pumps 257 1-1/2" Gray Submersible Pump

General Banzai: As someone who relies on Amazon reviews for everything, I just wanted to take a moment to come back and give an update 8 years later. I live in Washington State and purchased this in early 2015. We receive a lot of rain here and this thing has been fantastic. I have no backup attached. It's in a pit in my basement and it just kicks on when it needs to. During the Fall and Spring it's pretty frequent, but during the summer and some of the winter it just sits idle. From my personal experience, I have been very, very satisfied and would highly recommend it.

United States on Sep 11, 2023

Shoveldog: A quality American made product. The flow rate is easily double what the big box store version delivered.

United States on Sep 11, 2023

Amazon Customer: Bought this in 2015 and it has been going strong ever since. Typical installation, nice and quiet. However, after 5 months the switch got stuck and we ended up with at least 1" of water in some areas of the basement. As soon as I touched the float the pump turned on and worked perfect for years.

The switch has stuck a few times since then, but I installed a battery backup a few years after we had water and I know before it becomes a problem. Not ideal, but a battery backup is a good idea in general. Not sure I'd buy again or not. I can't imagine this is a common problem.

United States on Sep 11, 2023

123watchdog: For the price and glowing reviews, I expected a longer life. The pump was quiet when it functioned.

Canada on Apr 15, 2023

Gary: This is better than the local store sells. The magnetic switch should be superior to a mechanical one. Very quiet. All I hear is the check valve closing, the pump makes almost no noise at all.

Canada on Apr 07, 2023

Joe B.: I ordered this to replace a failed one of the same model. That made fitting it easier.

It worked once installed. However, 2 notes.

1. The threads at the mount point were REVERSE of what the old model was. One was inside thread the the other outside. This would prevent the simple reuse of the old hardware so I had to install new hardware. Which brings me to...

2. Despite claiming the adapter was included, it was not. This required an extra trip to the hardware store.

Not a really big deal, but something to be aware of when installing.

I have another sump with an identical pump. I will order a new one once that dies.

United States on Apr 04, 2023

Hasman: My house sits on a spring and there is a constant flow of water into the sump pit. Typical life for a sump pump in my house is about a year. Failure happens because of the sheer number of on-off cycles it goes through or the clogging up due to clay accumulating at the intake grates or the discharge pipes. At first glance the ground water looks clear, but there's a LOT of it being pumped (tens of thousands of gallons a day) that eventually the fine clay deposits get big enough. Therefore, every three months I snake the discharge pipes to clean them out.

I used to get Rigid brand pumps form the local home supplies store every 12 months or so. My first Liberty pump lasted 15-months and cost about the same to buy as the Rigid. I considered it a success and bought another. It lasted 11-months. I could hear the pump running but no water is being pumped. This was winter and I replaced it with a WAYNE CDU790 pump (about 30% cheaper) and kept the Liberty pump to look at in Summer. The Wayne pump started to show the same symptoms at about 6-months. Inspecting the Liberty pump I took out, I found the intake grates to be completely blocked and cleaned it out with a high pressure hose....

United States on Sep 21, 2019

Tim RW: The first day of the spring thaw and this pump is working like a champ

First, a note about customer service: I noticed that my pump was cycling ON for 55 seconds and OFF for about 15 seconds and I wanted to know if the cycle time was OK or if it was too short. I used the Contact Us form on the Liberty Pump site. They responded in 9 minutes which IMHO is truly remarkable customer service on a Good Friday. BTW they said the duty cycle is fine and said "Typically you would want a pump to run for a minute before turning back off."

If you have a chance, read the engineering specifications on the Liberty Pumps website, Aside from the build quality I like that they considered "serviceability" and will ship parts within 24 hours. This is a solidly built pump and is definitely built to last. I also like the float on this pump too, it's affixed to the body of the pump so you don't have to worry about it getting hung up on anything.

I'm glad I didn't cheap out.

Canada on Mar 30, 2018

Jason R.: We recently had an addition added to our house, which required a second sump pit in the new area of the basement and the plumber had installed another similar 250 series Liberty Pump VMF into that pit. Soon after, our old pump in our original pit started to die and I was impressed enough with the performance of the 1/4 hp version of the pump installed in the other location to purchase this for our other pit.

These pumps are very (relatively) quiet, clear a cycle in only a matter of seconds and the whole package just looks and feels like a high quality piece of machinery that I can trust. Performance wise, they're great, no complaints.

What I remain unsold on is the VMF switch mechanism. On the pro side, the VMF switch means there is only one cord leading to the pump instead of the traditional two with a separate float switch, everything is integral to the pump body. It also means that the switch is much less likely to get caught up on something inside or the side of the pit itself causing a no-pump or continuous-pump situation. However, my big issue with the VMF switch is that if there is no way to adjust the water level required to activate the and personally I feel...

Canada on Mar 29, 2017

Josh B.: This sump pump really impressed me. First of all on looks alone this thing stands out as a quality product. You can tell it is very well made in the quality of materials used, it is also quite heavy compared to the first sump I purchased (which died after 1 year of use). The instruction manual is pretty sparse, and there is a good reason for that, its extremely easy to setup and essentially maintenance free. Other than having to trim the ABS pipe shorter (as the discharge on this unit sits higher) it was a very painless install. After using this sump pump for the spring thaw I am very pleased with how it operated, its is so quiet compared to my previous pump that we can barely tell when its running, our previous pump made a terrible racket to the point that we had to shut the door to the utility room or else it would wake our kids up sometimes. The only thing I wish I could change is the float sensor, I have a small sump pit and this pump is so powerful it drains it within seconds, making for a short cycle time. I would prefer letting it leave a bit more water in the pit before pumping out, however they do sell a model with a float switch instead so if this ever needs replacing I...

Canada on May 03, 2016