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How I Monitor my Sump Pump - Why Hubitat Elevation / Here's a cool thing I did! - Hubitat

The sump used to always be a stressor for me.

This time of year I would hear it go off all the time and I would worry what if it got stuck? How many times is it really running?

One point of monitoring the sump is tracking it from an energy reporting smart outlet.

I use the energy reports to flip a virtual switch on/off via RM, which goes to InfluxDB, and then count the on/off changes in Grafana to make a chart. Can you tell when it warmed up, started raining and all the snow started melting? Thats a lot of water!

My other monitoring point is a leak sensor mounted just above the high point before the sump runs.

If this ever goes off I should have a few hours at least to prevent flooding. The excess water will start filling up the feeder pipes so there is a lot of room for extra water before it overflows the pit.

This rule flips the virtual switch on/off for tracking and also watches for it to become stuck running (if the float broke or got stuck)

Since the smart plug has the ability to turn off this rule makes sure it stays on

Great post and one additional thing I do is have a power source indicator to know if the circuit has faulted.

I have an Aeotec Water Sensor 6 that has a backup battery and tells me if power changes from mains to battery since my sump is on the same circuit as a bathroom above with GFI.

Do you burn through pumps and/or pump switches with that many cycles per day?

I had a terrible time with the built in float on a Zoeller sump pump welding the contacts with so many cycles. I first switched to a mechanical vertical float, but that only lasted about a year before frying contacts (at least it was easier to replace than an entire pump). I have since standardized on a dual float switch that has an adjustable run time.

As far as I know this is the original pump and float switch from 1997.

The pump is your typical pump that runs whenever power is applied. The float is just mounted to a cord which is attached to the top of the pump with a little clamp, and is adjustable for length to set the on/off height. When it goes up it kicks on and when it goes down it shuts off. I have adjusted mine so that it waits for the water to get just below the tubes before running, and then it nearly empties the pit. So it cycles less frequently that way. Its got to be at least 4-5 gallons per cycle.

Oh also BTW this is not typical, we had a bunch of snow and it warmed up and rained all at once.

For most of the year it just sits there waiting for rain.

Noticed you posted pictures of your leak sensor after my post above and see you are using the Dome sensor with the round sensor.

Please test that often because I had two of them fail on my - one covered by Dome's warranty and after the second failed I gave up and bought the Aeotec version.

Its actually the "Neo Coolcam" model which might be a knock off of the dome.

I was going to get the Ecolink with the lead on it originally but it was out of stock everywhere at the time.

I do pretty much the same thing, except it's directly logging to influxdb via NodeRed.

We had some pretty wet days due to the snowmelt and rain...

Thats how mine works as well, Outlet > RM > Virtual Switch > Node-Red > Influx > Grafana.

I just left out the middle explanation and jumped right to Grafana.

I have a similar situation.

I’ve installed multiple water sensors on two HE7s.

This is beyond the scope of monitoring, but I’ve installed a transfer switch to control running the pump from utility or an inverter connected to a battery.

I also have a Wayne DC backup pump with separate discharge.

I have two sump pumps.

One is the primary and the other is secondary. I do not monitor the primary pump as the secondary pump will start up if the primary fails. The secondary also runs if there is high rainfall. I have a Zooz ZEN15 plug outlet to monitor the power to the secondary sump pump. If the secondary pump starts up, it will trigger an alert message on my chime/sirens.

I have the same setup, except the secondary is 12V so I don't have an easy way of monitoring that.

You can always add a back up water powered sump pump.

It uses no electricity at all.

That's genius, I want one now.

But why they heck are they so expensive, more than an electric pump even. Its literally just a fancy automatic valve with a nozzle!

There’s an “Ask This Old House” episode discussing water-powered sump pumps.

If your secondary pump is running off a 12V battery how about a Zen17.

Power the relay from the 12Vdc supply and parallel the pump power line to the input (VC) for on/off status.

I do the same thing as with two minor RM-based additions:

I look to see if the pump is on for an extended period of time without corresponding amount of rainfall. I also check for the pump not activating when there is rain.

That's a good one, I do the first one, but just in general without the rain check.

I have a notification if it stays ON for more than 60 seconds at any time. Indicating it is stuck, which could burn out the motor. Typical run time is around 10 seconds to clear the entire pit.

That sounds like an interesting idea (I even have a spare ZEN17).

I might look into that, but I got the Basement Watchdog Big Combo CONNECT® with Wifi connect option and I'm not sure that I want to void my warranty by splicing into the wiring just to gain monitoring capabilities.

If I'm understanding your intent correctly, you don't need to splice to monitor power (and therefore on/off).

You can do it through a simple wall wart that has a power monitoring capability. Or you can install a more robust power monitoring solution like IotaWatt, which is what I do.

That's what I do for the main pump (using a heavy duty ZEN15), but I don't have the same monitoring on the 12V backup pump.

From this pic from the manual it looks like a pretty standard connector going from the pump to the control box on top of the battery.

Just make a little adapter/splitter to put between your pump wire and control box, and wire in your relay to the system.

Lol, I looked at it earlier and determined that would probably be the path of least resistance.

Would almost definitely void the warranty though. I figured that using some of my Wagos would do the job.

My approach for now is a vibration sensor on the pump outlet pipe to track pump cycles as well as a leak sensor in the sump well.

A large inverter, battery and automatic power transfer switch. I started with a Zooz Zen15 Power Switch to monitor power to turn on a virtual switch. At one point the Zooz turned off without an apparent command. That was an unacceptable risk. The switch had to go. Hubigraphs to monitor the pump cycle time with a virtual switch. A whole house generator this summer and two pumps. both online at two different float heights.

This is the wet season for me, in the driest part of the summer my longest cycle times are about four hours.

The shortest get down to 3-4 minutes.

If I’m not mistaken, you can monitor a 12VDC circuit with something like a MIMOlite by FortrezZ.

Nice work on the system My brother has a similar issue with a hyperactive sump in summer, and one basement flood that caused about $30K in damage.

He uses the Zoeller system which has a nice little control system, 12 V battery charging and the additional 12 V pump. It's worth taking a look as it does give him some peace of mind going forward. The new system (we updated his setup literally last night) runs the 12 V pump once a day for a few seconds, and warns if any issues.

For anyone that has had a failed physical switch on their sump... do yourself a favor and get an electronic switch.

I went through a pump every 1-2 years because the switch would quit working. I got tired of it and got an electronic switch (it's essentially a relay that goes inline with the sump power plug), and used a piece of wire to keep the physical float switch in the on position. It's been there for over 10 years now and isn't showing any sign of slowing down.

I have a second sump as a spare along with the parts needed to install it because I have a finished basement, just in case it goes out when stores are closed.

Worst case scenario I drop that into the pit and put the pipe into my utility sink. Never needed the spare yet though.

I just have a Grafana chart using InfluxDB data where it shows me the mean power.

Was thinking of adding a Grafana alert but I'm borrowing your rule instead.

Yeah and if you add the virtual switch to toggle on/off from my rule you can add a counter chart to Grafana.

Makes for a fun little metric. Never would have realized it goes off almost 200 times in one day without it!

I’ve had the opposite experience – prefer physical switch over electronic.

Electronic is susceptible to lightening surges. Is your installation DYI, or a commercial product? I am open to changing. Some of the electronic solutions have dry contact terminals.

Mine is a commercial product.

It's at least 10 years old so I have no idea what brand or if it's even still being made. It's very simple, it has a single wire that you attach to the pipe above the pump. When the water reaches it, it detects the completed circuit through ground and turns on the relay so the pump runs. It turns off when the amperage draw from the pump lessens because the pump ran out of water. It's been through brownouts and lightning storms and hasn't missed a beat. It's probably saved me at least a thousand dollars by now in pumps, installation materials, and time, not to mention not ever having had a finished basement that flooded.

I just noticed this string and just thought I'd mention my setup.

I got into smarthome stuff trying to find a way to track my sump pumps since we had one basement flooding in the past. I use a NodeMCU board for this. It is cheap, simple and I use it for 6 inputs and 1 output. I have two identical sumps at either end of the basement so this was a low cost option with lots of flexible inputs. They've been going for over 5 years now. He advertises them as a low cost alarm system, but I didn't have an alarm system and they are awesome for sump pump monitoring.

I finally got my reporting as I wanted in Grafana.

Going back to my comment on your ZEN15 driver thread, I'm using 'accessory' state to count actuation and both 'off's and 'on's are over reported. (I think it has something to do with power reports.) So I can't just count the number of 'on's.

Thanks for the inspiration!

Can you share a ss on how to create the Grafana chart?

At the end of the day it's not a particularly complex Flux query, but I wouldn't have been able to do it by myself.

Thanks, I never did figure out how to do the timezone thing, I was using some hack to subtract the hours and it would then be off when DST changed.

Also did not know how format the time properly!

Updated my top post with the Flux query and an updated screenshot since I added some sexy rounded edges to the bars.

Thank you for posting this.

You inspired me to setup Influx and Grafana to plot my sump pump activity. Everything is working great. Also, thanks to for the Flux query info. I didn't like the way the first bar in the chart only showed a partial days usage, so I added the following to the end of the flux query: