Ever woken up in the night to that familiar buzz of a stalled electric motor? Perhaps the power got knocked out by a storm as you slept and quietly overfilled the dark hole in your basement floor? Well, I know plenty of people that have had that happen. Me being me, I decided to come up with a home brew solution. Could I make it send push button notifications to a wireless device? Sure. Could I make it turn on some smart devices? Hell ya. But no, we’re not going to do all that. We are just gonna go bare bones, loud alarm when the water gets high. You see, some people are old fashioned… this device was designed to work with them.
So lets lay out some basic design points:
- Need a mounting system/frame
- Need a power source
- Need a way to sense the water level in the sump
- Need a really loud alarm to go off when water level reaches “alarming level”
For some reason, I had an idea in my head to use PVC for the frame. Probably because it is inexpensive, easy to work with and durable. I wanted something that sits on the floor of the basement, next to the sump well and extends down into the basin. At the lowest point would be the “high water sensor.”
I wanted to try to build it as simple as possible, using a simple switch to trigger the alarm. I came across a simple small float switch and a small alarm that ran on 9VDC on Amazon and ordered them.
The float acts just like a magnetic reed switch, and it is easy to change it back and forth from a normally closed (as shipped) to a normally open switch. All that needed to be done was to remove the locking washer on the bottom and flip the float. I was originally going to power it via a wall adapter, but after some short internal debates, I decided on using a 9V battery. The only thing to remember will be to change the battery yearly. Here is a small schematic to illustrate my over all wiring:
I started the assembly of the PVC pipe and mounted the float in the very bottom cap and ran a wire to the opposite end.
I then quickly designed and 3D printed a small cylinder shaped housing to go on the end of the pipe to hold the battery. I then mounted the alarm to the lid of the housing and wired in a 9V battery adapter up and fit it all in.
With it all wired up it was time to get it finished up and deployed to the field.
There it is right at home. So far so good – the alarm has not been needed, but with storm season right around the corner it will be getting tested shortly. I am going to make a second version of this device, with smart features. Hopefully sooner than later….