Last year, our daughter and son-in-law had their basement flooded because of a blocked drain at the bottom of the outside stairway to the basement. Seeing an opportunity to use a PICAXE, I built a device to monitor the water level near that drain. <A href='http://www.picaxe.us/WaterLevel-08.html' Target=_Blank>External Web Link</a>
It was installed in July, 2006, and has been silently hiding in a corner of the basement until this week.
My daughter called to tell me that after weeks of dry weather, they had serious rain during the night and were awakened around 1:30AM by a "beeping noise". On investigation, the beeping noise was coming from the Sonalert on the water alarm because the drain was blocked with leaves - but the water level was still below the threshold, so no water had entered the basement. They cleared the leaves from the drain and went back to bed.
Thank you to a reliable little bit of magic smoke encased in plastic ;-)
John
It was installed in July, 2006, and has been silently hiding in a corner of the basement until this week.
My daughter called to tell me that after weeks of dry weather, they had serious rain during the night and were awakened around 1:30AM by a "beeping noise". On investigation, the beeping noise was coming from the Sonalert on the water alarm because the drain was blocked with leaves - but the water level was still below the threshold, so no water had entered the basement. They cleared the leaves from the drain and went back to bed.
Thank you to a reliable little bit of magic smoke encased in plastic ;-)
John