Annual sump pump service plans: reminders, records and discharge rules.

A sump pump service plan is the part of a waterproofing business that pays when it is not raining. It also keeps the company looking at the same discharge lines year after year, and in some places where that water goes is regulated. Delano, Minnesota, is one example: its city code bars sump pump and footing-tile water from the sanitary sewer and adds a monthly surcharge to the sewer bill of a property out of compliance.

So the plan needs three things: a register of every pump under contract, a visit record the technician completes, and a reminder routine that drafts but never sends. This article sets out each, using Delano's ordinance as checked on 15 October 2026 as the worked example. Rules differ by municipality; check yours. Nothing here is legal advice, and the owner confirms the rule that applies with the municipality or a lawyer.

Paraphrased from the city's published PDF, and limited to Delano, it says the following.

That is one small city's rule. Another municipality may say something different or nothing at all, so a company working in several towns records each one's rule separately.

• WHAT IS BARRED

  No water from any roof, surface, groundwater, sump pump, footing tile, swimming pool or other natural precipitation may be discharged into the sanitary sewer system.

• THE DISCHARGE LINE

  A building that needs a sump must have a permanently installed discharge line: rigid, with no valves or quick connections for changing where the water goes, unable to be connected to the sanitary sewer, and able to discharge all year either to a suitable drainage area outside (never property owned by others or a public right-of-way) or into the city storm sewer.

• INSPECTION

  Owners of improved property discharging into the city's sanitary sewer must, within forty-five days of a notice from the city, have each building inspected by an inspector the city designates. Instead, the owner may provide a certificate from a licensed plumber, in a form the city accepts, stating that the property complies.

• LATER INSPECTIONS

  Any building may be reinspected yearly alongside water-meter or other inspections, and a new home's sump system must be inspected and comply before a certificate of occupancy is issued.

• THE SURCHARGE

  One hundred dollars a month is added to the sewer bill of a property that has not had a required inspection or does not comply, every month until it does. A violation found at an inspection is charged for every month between the two most recent inspections. Unpaid amounts may be assessed against the property, and a violation that continues after a cease-and-desist notice is a misdemeanor.

• WAIVERS

  The city council can grant a time-limited waiver where strict enforcement would cause undue hardship or a safety problem, with an additional sewer fee.

A plan technician looks at the discharge every visit. Under a rule like Delano's, the details that matter are visible ones: whether the line is rigid, whether there is a valve or a quick connection that could send water somewhere else, where the outlet ends, and whether a hose has appeared since last year. The record describes those facts in plain words, with a photo, every time.

What the record must never do is grade them. The waterproofing company is neither the city's designated inspector nor, unless it employs one, a licensed plumber, and under Delano's ordinance those are the routes to a compliance finding. When a visit record describes something that might conflict with the local rule, it goes to the owner, who decides what to tell the customer and whether to suggest a plumber. No assistant tells a customer that a discharge is legal, compliant or fine.

Grok Bot gives each user's Bots one persistent cloud computer with a shared workspace that all of them can read. The register can be a spreadsheet kept there, or the plan records in the company's field-service software, read through a custom integration or supervised browser use where the vendor permits it, subject to testing. Either way the file or the software is the record. The documentation says memory is no substitute for an authoritative source, so a renewal date the Bot remembers is not a renewal date.

• PROPERTY AND CONTACT

  Address, homeowner, and how they prefer to be reached.

• MUNICIPALITY AND RULE

  The town, a link to its discharge rule, the date it was read and the name of the person who confirmed it.

• SYSTEM

  Pump, basin, check valve, float type, battery backup if fitted, install date and the warranty reference.

• DISCHARGE AS LAST SEEN

  The route described in the technician's words, the photo reference and the date.

• PLAN

  Start date, renewal date and the visit window the owner sets.

• LAST VISIT

  Date, technician, and each check as the technician recorded it.

• OPEN ITEMS

  Anything the last visit left for the owner, including discharge notes.

• PAYMENT STATUS

  Read from the billing system through a custom integration; no Bot takes, makes or chases a payment.

Based on the Grok Bot documentation at docs.x.ai as checked on 15 October 2026. Its statements on Bot rules, Bot-to-Bot messaging, routine triggers, connected apps, approval expiry and payments were rechecked against docs.x.ai and Cursor's help pages on 26 October 2026. The trade examples are Aevrion's illustrations, not documented Grok Bot use cases. Aevrion Ops is an independent consultancy. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or a partner of xAI, SpaceXSI or Cursor. Grok Bot is named here only to describe it.

What a sump service visit covers is trade practice rather than regulation, and each company sets its own list. This article assumes four checks: run the pump to see that it starts, empties the basin and stops; look at the check valve; check that the float moves freely; and follow the discharge line outside, including, before winter, whether it can freeze or be buried. The record also notes where the water runs once it leaves the outlet; EPA's guide on mold and moisture, as checked on 15 October 2026, lists ground that slopes away from the foundation among its moisture-control tips. Delano's definition asks for a line that can discharge all year, but whether a given line meets it is for the city's inspector or a licensed plumber to say, not the plan record.

The technician records each check as found and passes photos to the owner, or saves them to a shared folder the owner has set up for the plans Bot (read by supervised browser use or a custom integration, tested first). The Bot then reads the record for completeness only: a visit with no line for the check valve, or a discharge entry with no photo, goes back through the owner to the technician. It never fills a check in.

A routine is one Bot's standing instruction to repeat a workflow on a timetable; scheduled runs cannot be closer than five minutes. Setting one up means confirming the owning Bot, the timetable and time zone, the input, the expected result, the approval boundary and what happens when the source is missing. For the plan the answers are short: the plans Bot; one morning a week; the register; a list of customers entering their visit window, each with a drafted reminder; no sending; and, if the register cannot be opened, a plain report of the failure instead of last week's list.

Reminders are drafts in the plans Bot's own conversation, sent by the owner. An approval raised by the routine with nobody there would expire after about ten minutes (Cursor's help pages say thirty) without running, so it is built to need none. The documentation describes no automatic retry or failure alert, so a week with no list is itself the signal: the owner asks the plans Bot why before booking anything.

1. 01

   Window opening

   Owner

   Plans Bot routine

   Advances when

   The register shows the owner's visit window opening for this pump

   Ends when

   If the register cannot be read, the routine reports that and drafts nothing

2. 02

   Reminder drafted

   Owner

   Plans Bot

   Advances when

   Draft placed in its conversation with the last visit summary

3. 03

   Reminder sent

   Owner

   The owner

   Advances when

   The owner edits or sends it, and the customer replies

4. 04

   Booked

   Owner

   The owner

   Advances when

   A date agreed by a person, never offered by the routine

5. 05

   Visited

   Owner

   The technician

   Advances when

   Four checks recorded, photos passed to the owner

6. 06

   Record closed

   Owner

   The owner

   Advances when

   Register updated; any discharge note goes on the owner's open items

   Ends when

   No discharge line is marked compliant at any state

Each of these is a person's step, however complete the register looks.

• NEVER SENDS

  Every reminder, renewal note and plan offer is a draft the owner sends.

• NEVER RULES ON A DISCHARGE

  It records what the technician saw and attaches the local rule; the municipality or a licensed plumber decides compliance.

• NEVER SETS THE INTERVAL

  How often a pump is visited is the owner's decision, written into the plan.

• NEVER TAKES PAYMENT

  No Bot takes or makes a payment. Reading payment status from the billing system is a custom integration; any payment page a site shows is the owner's to complete, by taking over the computer. Cursor's help pages add that a card saved in the Bot's Vault can be used at checkout without asking each time, so this design saves no card there.

• NEVER EDITS A RESULT

  A technician's record is corrected only by the technician or the owner.

Start with the pumps already under contract and the discharge rule of each municipality the company works in, read and confirmed by a person. Ask the plans Bot for one list from last month's register, compare it with the owner's own, and schedule the routine only once the two agree. The guide to reliable AI workflows for home-service companies covers routine design more generally.

If your service plans live in a spreadsheet and someone's memory, begin with the workflow automation readiness assessment. Aevrion Ops can then scope the register, the visit record, the reminder routine and the link to your billing or field-service software, which depends on that vendor's API or terms and on testing.

1. A sump service plan is recurring revenue and, where discharge is regulated, a record of where each customer's water goes.
2. Delano, Minnesota (as checked on 15 October 2026) bars sump water from the sanitary sewer, requires a rigid permanent discharge line and adds one hundred dollars a month to a non-compliant property's sewer bill.
3. Delano's inspection route is a city inspection within forty-five days of notice, or a licensed plumber's certificate; check your own municipality.
4. The register lives in one shared file or the company's software, never in a Bot's memory.
5. Pump test, check valve, float and discharge freeze checks are trade practice, recorded by the technician as found.
6. The reminder routine drafts and stops; no assistant tells a customer that a discharge is legal.