Best way to monitor condensate pump activity?

Configuration
1

I’ve got an outbuilding with a basement that gets pretty damp. I’ve got a humidifier in there that drains into an AC-powered condensate pump. I’d like to keep tabs on how frequently the pump operates, and for how long.

Most of the time it doesn’t run very long, as the reservoir in it is relatively small and the pump is pretty quick to clear it. But if it’s cycling a lot, or it’s running for too long then it might be a sign there’s a problem (like a blocked drain, or whatever).

Are any of the smart AC sockets going to be suitable for catching these short intervals? Would any of them be able to report a 2-5 second power consumption increase?

The pump I have is a Little Giant VCMA-15ULS, which does have a high-water level NC/NO switch output. Might this be a better way to catch pump activity?

I use zigbee and wifi (no z-wave). But I don’t know if the SLZB zigbee interface I’ve got would pick up a signal from the outbuilding. It’s ~75’ away and down in a cinderblock basement (that’s below grade). There is active wifi in that building. I have AC power at the location and would prefer to avoid using a battery-powered solution. I don’t know who makes a simple switch input that’s not going to be a contraption to wire up. I’d really prefer an off-the-shelf kind of thing. ESP32 and such are great, they’re just not what I’m motivated to use for this sort of solution.

2

I’ve looked at the Shelly 2PM and the Yolink YS7707.

I suppose if I rigged up an outlet box just for the pump’s power I could put a Shelly in the box and run the switch input to it. I could stub out a box from the existing breaker panel that’s on the wall.

If I use the Yolink it’d be adding yet another battery to maintain and I really try to avoid adding battery operated gizmos unless there’s no power available.

Ideally I’d love something local-only like a Pumpspy. All-in-one, nothing to lash together.

3

My solution is probably not what you’re looking for because it uses a Z-Wave Zooz ZEN15 heavy-duty outlet plug to monitor our basement sump pump. The Zooz plug monitors electrical use, and triggers almost instantaneously whenever the sump pump starts or stops. I have automations to make TTS announcements for sump pump starts and stops, and another one that watches run time and sends an email alert if the pump is running more than two minutes because the float or discharge line are likely jammed and the pump will burn up. (Typical pump run time is 32 seconds per cycle.)

I’ve been on the fence about whether or not I should include turning the pump’s outlet off if it is detected running for too long, but for now will just handle it manually since I have remote access and a camera in the basement to check for flooding…

1 Like
4

I was on this bug hunt a few years ago with a Homeseer setup and had enough negative experience with z-wave to decide to not bother with it anymore. Combination of poor devices and poor software support. I suppose it’s improved since then but this location is in an outbuilding basement, about 85’ from where the Home Assistant server is set up. Not sure I want to get into more z-wave network woes again.

But otherwise, yeah, a smart outlet with power monitoring seems like one way to approach this. It’d at least be all-in-one and not a contraption of cobbled together connections.

1 Like
5

This sounds exactly like what I do with my sump pumps. They clear the sumps pretty quickly, but that’s enough that a power-monitoring smart plug registers the change in current draw. I have a template which reports this as a binary on/off:

template:
  - binary_sensor:
      - name: "Pump Cycle On"
        unique_id: 'pump_on'
        state: "{{ states('sensor.third_reality_plug_5_current')|float(0) > 1 }}"

I was originally using WiFi smart plugs but I switched over to Zigbee because that network was a bit stronger in my basement. So if you already have WiFi in the outbuilding, then that should work fine.

2 Likes
6

Mind sharing which ones you were using? Both the wifi and the zigbee?

I know I have wifi down there as there’s a mesh unifi access point upstairs. Not sure if the zigbee network from the house reaches that far or not.

7

I’m currently using Third Reality power monitoring smart plugs. I’ve been moving away from WiFi devices because so many of them have cloud dependencies. Sorry, I don’t recall which brand I was using for the pumps.

8

Are you using their zigbee or matter plugs? I see they’ve got the M1 power monitoring sockets using either zigbee or matter-over-wifi.

Is there different support in HA for their features based on the interface? As in, more versatile support for the power monitoring for the zigbee models vs matter-over-wifi.

Because that’d be my driving factor, getting more support for the monitoring data in HA.

If the matter-over-wifi is supported ‘equally’ then that might be a good choice as I know I have wifi there. Otherwise if the functionality is only available via zigbee then I might have to go through added steps to get zigbee coverage out there.

Sorry to pick your brain on this but there’s a lot of conflicting conversations about all this, and you’ve got real-world implementing going on that parallels what I’m considering.

9

I have the Zigbee version, using ZHA. I have no idea about their Matter devices. I will say that I’ve had good results with the Third Reality brand, so I would be willing to look at their Matter devices, if I had any interest in trying out Matter.

My own bias would be toward trying to extend the Zigbee mesh to the outbuilding. It might be as simple as a mains-powered device like a smart plug half-way between the coordinator and the outbuilding, and another on the first floor of that building, to reach the basement. I just saw a four-pack of Third Reality smart plugs for under $40 US on Amazon. Not bad for a zero-effort solution.

I do exactly this to reach the far end of one outbuilding. I have a few smart plugs in rooms on that side of the house, then another in a small shed, then a few in the bigger outbuilding farther away.

1 Like
10

I would just use a Shelly Plug for this.

11

There’s no halfway point between the coordinator and the outbuilding. It’s about 70’ from where the coordinator lives and the outbuilding, and I’m looking to monitor a socket in the basement below that. I don’t currently ‘need’ anything else in the ground level of the outbuilding, but I suppose I could add another one of their sockets or the RGB motion sensor if it’d reliably act as a zigbee repeater.

I’m going to pickup one of each, zigbee and matter, and see which connects most effectively.

Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll report back how it goes.

1 Like
12

I picked up a Third Reality dual socket and their motion sensor zigbee units. I have the motion sensor at ground level about 70’ line-of-sight back to the SLZB coordinator. I have the dual socket unit in the basement below the motion sensor.

I paired them while still inside, and then moved them to their final location, which I realize is generally ‘not ideal’. But at this point they’re the first zigbee units active so I wasn’t too worried about the mesh coordinating with them.

The pairing was brain-dead simple. I didn’t even have to use their app. Just plugged 'em in and used the add device option in the zigbee integration.

I did also picked up one of their matter-over-wifi sockets. I had to use the home assistant android app to scan the QR code on it. The one wrinkle was I had my phone on the mostly 5ghz ssid, and I have all my IoT gear on a 2.4ghz network. The HA integration does not appear to have a way to change the WiFi network, so I just deleted the device, changed my phone to the other network and added the device back again.

I have not yet done anything with them, other than to note it’s already collected data to chart consumption for the dehumidifier:

image
image555×468 22.8 KB

1 Like