My home has a sump pump used with a washing machine in the basement. I have a button near the pump that is a bit of trouble to turn on and off and is difficult to reach. The waste from the washing machine can be disposed of using smart plugs and automation scripts.
The setup is a Home Assistant Yellow, although I believe this solution would work for any Home Assistant with a ZigBee hub. This project recommends an additional 2 smart plugs with one outlet each, Zigbee, ZWave, and energy monitoring. The visual editor or YAML automation pumps the waste from the washing machine based on the energy monitoring from the smart plug attached to it.
I tested the power level of the washing machine in W (Watts) and noticed that it would get above 1 or 2 W after I turned it on. I created automations that pumped the waste for a set time which activated after turning on the washing machine and after it has finished a washing cycle at the threshold of 2 W. The image below is the historical power usage in Watts when I used the washing machine’s 15 minute cycle.
This script shows the logic that activates the pump when the washing machine is turned on. When creating the automation triggered after wash cycle, it is still the value 2 but in the below field. It also depicts the set of instructions to activate and deactivate the pump according to a set time. The same was used for the automation triggered after a wash cycle except that the delay was set for 2 minutes.
Question about the sump pump. So the wasteater (soapy water etc.) goes into a sump pump that then pumps that soapy water int your yard? Isn’t the sump only supposed to get rid of excess ground water? Becuae it is my understanding that sump pumps cannot be direclty connected to sewage lines either (or at least wherer I live)… ?
Thanks for putting thought in this topic. While it is a common feature in homes around me near NYC/New Jersey, it was confusing at first. I was hoping to add clarifying photos but because I’m a new user, I was limited to the photos I could post, but I’ll include this one that may help out,
I actually have two sump pumps, one for the excess ground water, and another for this water reservoir. The waste routes underground through the yard and into a sewage line, built before I moved in. The pump dedicated to the water basin is actually a repurposed above-ground pool pump.
@UngluedChalice
A float was another option to attach into the water basin but it was around the same price as the 2 smart plugs I used. Another option I thought of was to use a Zigbee water leak detector on the bottom of the basin but the cost exceeded the Zigbee smart plug with energy monitoring.
As another note, I also experimented with IFTTT, Google Home, Alexa, and Siri, but found that there was glaring privacy issues. This solution does not send data over the internet as far as I’m aware.
After a few months of testing, I want to post the full script. It worked every time and the one exception I was looking out for was the automation turning on the pump and then never turning it off which never occurred and there was no indication it could occur.
This setup is general, and will work for a variety of applications. The analysis that needs to be done for each one is the wattage levels indicating that the system is on or off. For a standard washing machine, this was 2W.
