Remote GFI question for basement craw space. (1 Viewer)

[MEMCruiser]

I have a crawl space that has sump pump on a GFI outlet. This area is hard to get to. The GFI has faulted before without me knowing causing the sump pump not to work which has caused the basement to flood. I was wondering if anybody knows if there exists a remote controlled or wireless GFI that will alert you when it has tripped and or maybe let you remotely reset it.

I am also working on an emergency battery back up that will work if I lose power to the house. If anybody has done this before I would love some info on your set up.

Thanks.

 

[fledglingme]

a gfci can be installed and a "slave" recpt. used where it's hard to get to. the gfci trips becaue there's a "fault" condition in the equipment pluged into it ! there's a reason and should be tracked down and repaired first.

 

[MEMCruiser]

a gfci can be installed and a "slave" recpt. used where it's hard to get to. the gfci trips becaue there's a "fault" condition in the equipment pluged into it ! there's a reason and should be tracked down and repaired first.

I think it tripped because we had some storms and lost power.

 

[KLF]

Swap out the receptacle for a standard one, and put a GFCI breaker in the panel feeding the circuit.

 

[MEMCruiser]

Swap out the receptacle for a standard one, and put a GFCI breaker in the panel feeding the circuit.

wow that seems easy. thanks!

 

[LAMBCRUSHER]

a gfci can be installed and a "slave" recpt. used where it's hard to get to. the gfci trips becaue there's a "fault" condition in the equipment pluged into it ! there's a reason and should be tracked down and repaired first.

I think it tripped because we had some storms and lost power.

Swap out the receptacle for a standard one, and put a GFCI breaker in the panel feeding the circuit.

a gfci breaker is gunna be spendy...in order to save some cost for certain clients, I would opt to use the GFCI repeptacle placed just under the panel(or other convenient location) and then slave a standard receptacle off of the "load" terminals on the back of the GFCI receptacle. If weather caused the GFCI to trip, it will do the same with a GFCI/slave receptacle, and the GFCI breaker. it is in the nature of the GFCI to trip whenever there is a neutral to ground condition-this can be created by water/weather. in your situation, I recommend using a remote GFCI master receptacle, placed where it can be viewed easily-the newer GFCIs have an LED indicator light to let you know by a glance from across the room if it is energized or not. the GFCI breaker would require opening the panel cover to see if the breaker has tripped-too much money and not what you're looking for. the remote GFCI can be placed near a door to your basement, or some other easily seen spot, and then a jumper wire can be run to the sump pump receptacle.
as for battery back-up, you'd have to have a big enough bank of batteries to handle your pumps load for the desired amount of time, an inverter to change the DC current in your batteries into AC current for your pump, and a trickle charger/battery maintainer big enough to keep your battery bank charged. another option-perhaps less expensive- would be to obtain a DC sump pump, the battery bank required to run said pump and a trickle charger to keep the battery well full. this option will shave to cost of the inverter, but add the cost of a DC pump- I think the pump is going to be less than an inverter large enough to run your existing pump. HTH

 

[Toyo FJ40]

There are cheap battery backup sump pumps that mount a second 12 volt pump above your regular sump pump and wull push about a tenth of the water your 120 pump will or there are battery packs that will run a 120 volt sump pump. APC makes an UPS for sump pumps Sump Pump power supply
It's rated for 2 hours continuous run.

There are some rated 20 hours continuous run.

 

[Recon1504]

You could always mount a high water alarm which would alert you to a high water condition no matter what the cause...

 

[alia176]

You could always mount a high water alarm which would alert you to a high water condition no matter what the cause...

This would be my solution as well. Have a remote/wireless alert beeper located in the common area so that you know something is up. I think you'd want this extra layer of monitoring regardless of a backup sump pump solution you go with.

When I lived in IL, I had a Honda EU2000i for extended outages during inclement weather just for the sump pump operation (and the house too).