Water Alarm System For Crawlspace

December 25, 2012 5:12 PM

I'm looking for a water detection system with a wireless alarm.

I've found lots of wireless detection alarm systems but most appear to place the unit that makes the alarm noise on or near the unit that is detecting the water.

For me, the best use of this type of system is in the crawlspace where 1) I don't frequent too often and 2) any leak that happens will go undetected the longest and end up costing the most money. I'd like to set up the water detectors in the crawlspace (couple of places) and have the alarm on the ground level of my home.

Do such systems exist? I found this system on Amazon but it didn't get too hot of reviews and I'm wondering if the home-improvement hive can direct me to a better system.

posted by shew to home & garden (3 answers total)

If you wanted something more complicated, you could roll your own out of some Z-Wave appliances.
posted by procrastination at 5:24 PM on December 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

Some years ago Nuts and Volts magazine ran an article on making a flood alarm with a CMOS IC, a 9V battery and a piezo tone generator. The author claimed very long battery life while inactive and very loud alarm when activated. I couldn't find the article in a cursory search, but it looks like one of their advertisers was selling a kit of the same design.

Here's the page from the Jan 2008 issues with the ad. Water Sensor Alarm, bottom right corner of the left hand page.
posted by Bruce H. at 7:09 PM on December 25, 2012

Ooh, one of the things that keeps getting mentioned about this new DIY automation device is that a TWINE can e-mail or SMS (or many other things) when its alarm condition is tripped, and you can connect it to a flood-detector/water-shutoff kit. The TWINE comes with its own moisture detector, btw, you don't need another device if you just want the notification.
posted by dhartung at 11:14 PM on December 25, 2012