I am looking for solutions to monitor when a sump pump can’t keep up, preferably before it overflows.
My parents have a V3 hub in the US and live in an area that gets a lot of rain in short periods. Occasionally their sump pump can’t keep up and I’d like to set something up to notify them of floods before it gets bad.
My original idea was to put a leak sensor near the opening. Then I started wondering if there is a better way, like monitoring the water level so they know BEFORE water floods their basement?
They don’t have many devices so not a super strong mesh yet. The hub would be on the main floor directly above the sump pump so I may or may not need a repeater.
Aeotec makes a similar model with all of the latest and greatest zwave support.
I also like the Strips version. You can mount it vertically on the wall of your sump. It has two contact points so you can also get some idea of the depth in addition to the wet contact.
You can check with the company, but they should be fine if you’re just talking about a regular flooded room type situation. They are intended for a 10 year use and do dry out again and then work again. Really nice engineering, with patented design. Since you don’t change the battery, they are fully sealed and nicely weatherproof.
That said, you wouldn’t want to have them in a situation where they were fully underwater and expect to get much usable information over time because the radio signal will be disbursed by the water.
So it depends on exactly how you were thinking of using them. Again, I would check with the company.
Almost all leak sensors have two or three contact points, because the way that they work is when water touches both of the contact points it completes a circuit and that’s what causes the sensor to report. It’s not a depth measurement. You don’t get any report until both contact points are immersed.
Maybe the sensative is designed differently, but it doesn’t look like it to me from the specs sheet. I would check with the company to be sure.
If you’re looking for something less expensive, this no-name brand should work. As @JDRoberts said above, each device is a single trigger alarm. You could add multiple sensors at different heights to determine relative water lever, but I don’t know of any device that will give you an exact number.
As @JDRoberts stated, the strips dry out and can continue to be used. I can’t speak to how long they can be submerged.
As for the depth, you are correct that you cannot get a depth measurement, but the strips will indicates an amount of wetness as a percentage. In a sump, you may be able to find a way to treat it like a depth by figure out how it soaks through the pads. See the product details through this listing, and the manual. The amazon listing indicates you get the value out as a percentage of wetness, but I don’t see that in the manual. All I see is Value 13 (Leakage alarm level) which controls the wetness percentage that triggers the alarm.
I don’t need the depth but putting something inside the reservoir just below the rim would give notice that it is about to overflow. Hence the Strips submersion question.
Using an Aeotec in my sump, been there 6 years now, replaced the batter twice. I have the probe zipped tied to the down pipe about 5 inches down and about 3 inches above where the pump kicks on.