email alerts for you sump pump?

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Bulldog Plumbing

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I have a customer looking for an email alert system for her sump pump. I know that the pro series deluxe controller has the remote terminal to tie into an alarm system. Do any of you know of any other option that you have used and had positive results with? thanks.
Doug
 

LLigetfa

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There are inexpensive video cameras that have relay contact inputs that can trigger a recorded sequence to be emailed. Finding a device that can send out emails is probably easier than finding an ISP that will accept emails from said device. With all the spamming going on, most ISPs have tight controls on their email servers.

I work in IT and have lots of devices that email me but as we have our own internal email infrastructure, we don't need to interface the devices to an ISP's email server.
 

Bulldog Plumbing

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i have high hopes that the pro series s3033 can be tied into the alarms system that the lady has already installed in her home. I'll let you know how it works out
 

hj

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pump

IT sounds an alarm when the float has been activated for 10 minutes, so even if it could send a message, which it apparently cannot, it still means you would either be under water or about to be, which doesn't help if you are on the other side of town. I would rather have a backup pump that informs me that it has STARTED, so I know the main pump has a problem but the backup is handling it temporarily.
 
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LLigetfa

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The actual lead time before it's too late would vary but I agree that an alert on a backup pump kicking in may be preferential. My sump pit has only a high-water alarm and under wet conditions, it gives me 4 hours advance notice before the pit overflows.

At work I have monitoring systems that send text messages to my phone, via an email-to-text gateway. It can also send pager alerts.
 

hj

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Texts, e-mails, or page alerts are ONLY effective if you are in a position to take remedial action in a timely manner. In other words, they let you know what you might find by the time you arrive home to do something about the situation, or let you notify your homeowner's insurance agent before he closes for the day.
 

LLigetfa

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Yes, all sage advice. One example I have is with my backup power system at work. The UPS will trigger an alert but I don't want the alert to wake me up in the middle of the night for every short power bump so I set the threshold on it to only alert me if the backup generator doesn't start after X number of minutes. Of course, that then takes those number of minutes away from my response time and I need to rush to town to manually start the generator. The UPS batteries are sized for that possibility.

That also points out a flaw with nuisance alerts. Get too many of them and they are crying wolf and may get ingored.
 

SumpPumpTech

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What an excellent question. Here's an answer almost a year later, but worth the wait. A Chicagoland company has just launched the world's first and only internet connected sump pump system. This is the answer many people have been waiting for. I can't wait to have one installed. It has an iPhone app and everything! Email and text alerts. Remote monitoring etc. Not sure of cost. I'll update when I have more info.
 

Hackney plumbing

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. I have nevr understood why anyone would build a house in such a way that you had to keep a pump running or it will flood.
 

DonL

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If you have a Ethernet feed available and a dry pair of contacts you could set a router up to do the alarming. Then it would not need to have a computer connected.

Or use a old sell phone, and connect the headset to the dry pair as a trigger. There is an app for that.

But why would you want too ?
 

wayne186

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Water sensor that sends alerts via email.

I have a customer looking for an email alert system for her sump pump. I know that the pro series deluxe controller has the remote terminal to tie into an alarm system. Do any of you know of any other option that you have used and had positive results with? thanks.
Doug

I use a device called an IT watchdog minigoose 2. http://www.itwatchdogs.com/product-detail-minigoose_ii-8.html It has an additional water sensor http://www.itwatchdogs.com/product-detail-water_sensor-36.html which you could fix at a given height in the sump to detect water.

This is capable of many things including remote monitoring, temperature sensors etc. Expect to pay about $240 for the sensor and the minigoose to get the email alerting (also does SMS and SNMP alerting and has a neat web interface so you can manage it remotely).. I love the device and I have temperature sensors monitoring all kinds of things including the ground temperature for geothermal, attic temp, water sensors in critical areas.. a perfect solution and a cheap reliable one at that.
 

DonL

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I use a device called an IT watchdog minigoose 2. http://www.itwatchdogs.com/product-detail-minigoose_ii-8.html It has an additional water sensor http://www.itwatchdogs.com/product-detail-water_sensor-36.html which you could fix at a given height in the sump to detect water.

This is capable of many things including remote monitoring, temperature sensors etc. Expect to pay about $240 for the sensor and the minigoose to get the email alerting (also does SMS and SNMP alerting and has a neat web interface so you can manage it remotely).. I love the device and I have temperature sensors monitoring all kinds of things including the ground temperature for geothermal, attic temp, water sensors in critical areas.. a perfect solution and a cheap reliable one at that.


That is a nice system.

May be a overkill for a sump pump alert but it would do the job.

Devices like that are becoming common place for new green houses.
 
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