so much for my plans for this morning

SUMP PUMP EMERGENCY!

that motor-purring noise i'd been hearing up the plumbing chase was not, as i'd thought, one or another of the oil burners doing their thing. nono! it was the sump pump trying to push water and failing. it's been doing that for a while, now.

i swapped in the cold-swap pump, but it has similar behavior -- it worked for a bit and then shut off because it was wedged. clearly, something's up with the pvc line that feeds into the main sewer drain. i even tried removing the one-way valve in case that was fucking up, but that wasn't it.

now where the bloody hell did i put my plumbing snake?
*stompstompstomp*

well, that's better

i'll keep a close eye, but it looks like a slight change in the pvc plumbing and a new one-way valve and my sump now appears to be pumped. i'll have to take a look tomorrow and make sure it's still at a happy low level.

all in all, i'm fairly happy. it could've been much worse, as i caught it before serious flooding had happened, and i still appear to have a sufficient-to-the-task cold-spare pump available if this one has a catastrophic failure some time.