NA-Knowing when a circuit is dead

[donjohnston]

Recently I had a breaker trip at my house. This breaker serves the lift station (what some call an ejector pump) for the septic system. There's an alarm which provides an alert if the level in the pit gets too high. Except that alarm is powered by the same circuit that powers the pump. (if I were ever going to build another house, I would have separate circuits for the pump and alarm)

So when the breaker tripped, the only indication was when the pit filled up and things stopped draining properly. That's when I discovered the outlet was dead and identified the breaker had tripped.

Sometime later, the GFCI that serves the garage outlets tripped. These outlets are where the water softener and irrigation controller are connected. Since the irrigation runs in the early morning and the water softener regens when it needs to, it was a while before I noticed it.

I'm thinking about a box that will alert you if a circuit has lost power. Obviously, this isn't something that's commonly needed since most of the time, you know immediately when a circuit has failed (lights don't come on, computer doesn't power up, garage door opener doesn't, etc) or when the circuit has failed, there's no negative impact that it's been off.

Has anyone used one of these devices?

 

[Lindberg]

Search Amazon for "power failure alarm." There are plenty. The simplest form is a battery and buzzer. Line voltage charges the battery and when the voltage goes away, the alarm sounds.

 

[SkyChaser]

You could also just get one of those plug-in carbon monoxide monitors. They have a battery, and when they aren't powered from the outlet, you'll hear it in the next county, as they alarm very loudly to let you know they're running off of battery. Of course, you'd need one for every circuit that you want to be alerted to, and know which outlet to plug it into, but it will be quite obvious when a breaker blows.

 

[Salty]

I built a float switch for this, works for both the breaker and if the pump fails.

The floats were so cheap, I put a few in just in case one got "hung up". That was a couple years ago, and it's been hands off ever since and works perfectly.

 

[PaulS]

Hmmm, sounds like a crappy situation.

 

[Dan Thomas]

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=power+fa...=power+failure+alarm,aps,629&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

 

[Pinecone]

These make a LOT of sense.

I lost two freezers of food when the sump pump locked up and tripped the breaker.

I need to order a few of these for various circuits that are not otherwise obvious.