That Spokane chart sounds real nice on paper, but 7/16 to 1/2 is a 1/16 difference. Come on. Half the time the pad rolls sit in a hot truck for a week and compress down before you even staple them, so whatever the spec sheet says is out the window by install day. I've pulled up carpet where the pad flattened to nothing under a couch and the seams still looked clean, and I've seen pencil thin pad with lines you could trip on. The gap is the subfloor, the temperature, and whether the installer actually kicked it in tight, not 1/16 of foam. Blaming the pad is just a handy excuse to buy new spec sheets instead of admitting the stretch job was lazy.

That line about Ron showing up with a backup pump and a generator is basically my buddy Dave's story too. His sump died during a storm two winters back and he didn't have a backup, so he was out there at 2am bailing water into buckets while his wife called around for anyone with a spare pump. Cost him a few grand in ruined flooring, way more than the battery unit he bought the next week.