Thought I’d revive this old thread (very useful info and history!), rather than start a brand new one for an almost identical topic. I know that Tyler also posted an excellent (and more recent) thread on this subject here.
While I don’t exactly have a sump pump, I have a grinder pump that is used to process sewage in the basement and pump it up to the sewer line. The main difference is that usage is driven more by normal home water consumption than by environmental conditions, but the failure modes and flood ramifications seem to be comparable. Thus, I was thinking that the applications are similar enough as to justify the same type of monitoring solution, though perhaps opting-out of the “pump is running normally”-type notifications.
Right now I have a grinder pump activated by a control float switch. There is also an alarm float switch, which activates a local alarm. The grinder pump power cable currently connects to a series/piggy-back outlet, which is used for the control float switch, as suggested by these posts. The alarm float switch connects, of course, to the local alarm.
I think that the simplest and least invasive approach would be to just add a flood sensor to the whole arrangement, at the same level as the local alarm float switch. Then, connect power for both the grinder pump and float control switch serially, using the existing piggy-back outlet (just as they are currently powered) to an HDSS.
Some questions:
1.) For my Qolsys IQ2+ panel, I assume that I don’t specifically need the QS5536-840 flood sensor that Tyler called out, but could use the DSC PowerG one for this application, instead? I already have one of these PowerG ones, and would prefer to keep using the same model throughout the house. The only downside to the PowerG variant that I have found is it can only be configured for Group 38 (Reporting), as opposed to the QS5536-840, which appears to also support Group 25 (Non-reporting). Not a huge deal, however, as Reporting would probably be the more appropriate response type for this application anyway.
2.) Any practical feedback on this general approach to sump pump monitoring from other users who have implemented it (xeon, ImpetuousRacer, kcnu, Ben) and had some runtime? Ben, did you ever get a different variation of this solution working, based on using a float switch, rather than a flood sensor? Any recommendations or comments on your experience/application?
3.) If I decide to pick up a compatible Z-wave water valve in the future, can these same “pump failure” conditions be used to do more than just notify/alarm - Can these be used to automatically close the water valve? This is one use case that would make sense using grinder pump, which likely wouldn’t with a traditional sump pump.