History:
Purchased a home 28 years ago with a septic system that had been installed when the house had been built 6 year prior ... the unknown issue was it had a lifting station that had been improperly installed: the installer had buried 14/2 ac INDOOR wire and wired it to a regular 15A breaker (NOT GFI) ... at the time of purchase, there was no knowledge of any of this ... the realization came at the 5 yr pump out ... at that point still not realizing the issue with the wiring BUT finding there was NO alarm or secondary fail safe, as an automation specialist, installed an X10 sending unit attached to an independent float PLUS added a 2nd parallel float on the motor ... thankfully, the x10 sending unit alerted me to the pump failing in 2015 ... at that point, I finally found the AC wiring issue ... so a major upgrade was undertaken to replace this indoor cable with approved outdoor/in ground wire and for most of the 20' distance to the house ran this in underground conduit (specifically at the house entrance and at the pump lifting hole) ... had to also replace some creosote timbers acting as a man hole riser (completely rotted out and caving in to the top of the lifting tank) with a proper pump lifting station riser (green plastic with dome lid) and then also replaced all the pump wiring new floats and new pump ... also replaced the back valve and installed a shut off valve (the lifting station has a rise of 12' and a run of 50')
Failure:
Last week (10 years later) my wife is watering the flowers and hears some gurgling noises ... investigation revealed that both the septic and lifting tanks were full to the brim and overflowing in to our yard ... this time my X10 Sender had completely failed along with BOTH pump Floats ... turns out the pump is still fully functional PLUS had been fully checked 9 months prior when the Septic tank had been fully pumped out
Current Solution:
1) 2 new floats have been installed
2) a 6' 2" ABS pipe with a toilet flange has been assembled as a tower stand to hold these new floats (rather than pulling the pump to re-connect these to the pump)
3) a relay; 120VAC coil (30mA) with 30A 220VAC contacts (hermetically sealed) is now going to be used to turn on the Pump
4) the 2 parallel float switches will now only have to supply 30mA to the Relay Coil instead of 10A to the motor which I expect finally killed the primary float switch
5) an Insteon 2450 will be used to provide the all important flood alarm monitoring (this device can be polled unlike the previous X10 device ... without the ability to poll the x10 sensor status, as this device only provides a one shot alarm output (upon the flood switch closing), there is a good possibility that either the X10 receiver missed the Alarm command OR that the X10 input device had failed (flood float was fully operational))
6) all electronics/connections will NOW be housed in a water tight container
7) Insteon 2450 will be used 3 ways: first the com of the relay will be hooked to the S(ensor) input with a 3rd/alarm/flood float attached to the NC to gnd this will both send an x10 signal to an um506 receiver OR be poll able via PLM 2413 ... second the NO will be connect to an AC current sensor dry contact to gnd ... third using the PLM 2413 controller will now have the ability to control checking both the current status of the alarm float OR watching for the pump and ensuring it doesn't stay on forever ... if it sees the pump on it won't revert to flood watch until the pump goes off ... if the pump runs for longer than 60 minutes then it could raise an alarm ... PLM 2413 will be hooked to Home Assistant via HAOS
8) There is another sensor at the AC Panel that will trigger a sonalert if the PUMP throws its breaker
Question:
Should I rely on one relay to run the pump or perhaps add another one in parallel with it (amazon shipped me two relays so I can either wire it in OR leave it in the box as a spare much like a fuse) The pump is 120VAC at 10A (measured) each relay is supposed to be rated for 30A at 220VAC so the contacts (sh)wouldn't be relying on a shared load ... this would be more a case of protecting a single point of failure from an open coil and or contact failure ... (I know it doesn't cover a welded contact BUT the HA monitor should alert me if the motor runs longer than 60 minutes)
Note: I see in other posts that these pumps are sometimes wired to a controller with some sort of special on/off logic ... right or wrong, since day one (house built 1991), these pumps have only used one float to turn on and off (multiple plumbing professionals have seen this installation over the 28 years I have lived here without raising any red flags in this regard) ... as a test, bypassing the pump float, allows the pump to run all way to the very bottom of the intake valve without stopping ... meaning nothing internal to the pump shuts it off ... when the float switch is upside down it makes contact turning on the pump ... the float switch appears to remain on until is almost hanging straight down again shutting off the pump ... having 2 float switches in parallel plus a flood alarm was supposed to be an insurance policy to keeping this system operational and safe ... it worked in 2015 but totally failed in 2025 (it was pointed out to me that the 2nd float installation failed in that the float could never make contact ... so ... actually the 2025 failure is due to a failed primary float followed by no flood float alarm being received ... as the 2nd float on closer inspection was also intermittent, both floats have now been replaced)
Purchased a home 28 years ago with a septic system that had been installed when the house had been built 6 year prior ... the unknown issue was it had a lifting station that had been improperly installed: the installer had buried 14/2 ac INDOOR wire and wired it to a regular 15A breaker (NOT GFI) ... at the time of purchase, there was no knowledge of any of this ... the realization came at the 5 yr pump out ... at that point still not realizing the issue with the wiring BUT finding there was NO alarm or secondary fail safe, as an automation specialist, installed an X10 sending unit attached to an independent float PLUS added a 2nd parallel float on the motor ... thankfully, the x10 sending unit alerted me to the pump failing in 2015 ... at that point, I finally found the AC wiring issue ... so a major upgrade was undertaken to replace this indoor cable with approved outdoor/in ground wire and for most of the 20' distance to the house ran this in underground conduit (specifically at the house entrance and at the pump lifting hole) ... had to also replace some creosote timbers acting as a man hole riser (completely rotted out and caving in to the top of the lifting tank) with a proper pump lifting station riser (green plastic with dome lid) and then also replaced all the pump wiring new floats and new pump ... also replaced the back valve and installed a shut off valve (the lifting station has a rise of 12' and a run of 50')
Failure:
Last week (10 years later) my wife is watering the flowers and hears some gurgling noises ... investigation revealed that both the septic and lifting tanks were full to the brim and overflowing in to our yard ... this time my X10 Sender had completely failed along with BOTH pump Floats ... turns out the pump is still fully functional PLUS had been fully checked 9 months prior when the Septic tank had been fully pumped out
Current Solution:
1) 2 new floats have been installed
2) a 6' 2" ABS pipe with a toilet flange has been assembled as a tower stand to hold these new floats (rather than pulling the pump to re-connect these to the pump)
3) a relay; 120VAC coil (30mA) with 30A 220VAC contacts (hermetically sealed) is now going to be used to turn on the Pump
4) the 2 parallel float switches will now only have to supply 30mA to the Relay Coil instead of 10A to the motor which I expect finally killed the primary float switch
5) an Insteon 2450 will be used to provide the all important flood alarm monitoring (this device can be polled unlike the previous X10 device ... without the ability to poll the x10 sensor status, as this device only provides a one shot alarm output (upon the flood switch closing), there is a good possibility that either the X10 receiver missed the Alarm command OR that the X10 input device had failed (flood float was fully operational))
6) all electronics/connections will NOW be housed in a water tight container
7) Insteon 2450 will be used 3 ways: first the com of the relay will be hooked to the S(ensor) input with a 3rd/alarm/flood float attached to the NC to gnd this will both send an x10 signal to an um506 receiver OR be poll able via PLM 2413 ... second the NO will be connect to an AC current sensor dry contact to gnd ... third using the PLM 2413 controller will now have the ability to control checking both the current status of the alarm float OR watching for the pump and ensuring it doesn't stay on forever ... if it sees the pump on it won't revert to flood watch until the pump goes off ... if the pump runs for longer than 60 minutes then it could raise an alarm ... PLM 2413 will be hooked to Home Assistant via HAOS
8) There is another sensor at the AC Panel that will trigger a sonalert if the PUMP throws its breaker
Question:
Should I rely on one relay to run the pump or perhaps add another one in parallel with it (amazon shipped me two relays so I can either wire it in OR leave it in the box as a spare much like a fuse) The pump is 120VAC at 10A (measured) each relay is supposed to be rated for 30A at 220VAC so the contacts (sh)wouldn't be relying on a shared load ... this would be more a case of protecting a single point of failure from an open coil and or contact failure ... (I know it doesn't cover a welded contact BUT the HA monitor should alert me if the motor runs longer than 60 minutes)
Note: I see in other posts that these pumps are sometimes wired to a controller with some sort of special on/off logic ... right or wrong, since day one (house built 1991), these pumps have only used one float to turn on and off (multiple plumbing professionals have seen this installation over the 28 years I have lived here without raising any red flags in this regard) ... as a test, bypassing the pump float, allows the pump to run all way to the very bottom of the intake valve without stopping ... meaning nothing internal to the pump shuts it off ... when the float switch is upside down it makes contact turning on the pump ... the float switch appears to remain on until is almost hanging straight down again shutting off the pump ... having 2 float switches in parallel plus a flood alarm was supposed to be an insurance policy to keeping this system operational and safe ... it worked in 2015 but totally failed in 2025 (it was pointed out to me that the 2nd float installation failed in that the float could never make contact ... so ... actually the 2025 failure is due to a failed primary float followed by no flood float alarm being received ... as the 2nd float on closer inspection was also intermittent, both floats have now been replaced)
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