Great Thread here. Are these 3 items what I need to start (for both temp and water protection)? Any help would be appreciated.
I’ve been meaning to add some kind of remote monitoring for years.
Item Description Price Qty Delete Total
Wireless Water/Moisture Sensor - 1 unit / Multi-Point Transmit Wireless Water/Moisture Sensor - 1 unit / Multi-Point Transmit $24.00
Wireless Sensor Tag (13-bit Temperature and Humidity) - 1 unit Wireless Sensor Tag (13-bit Temperature and Humidity) - 1 unit $29.00
Ethernet Tag Manager - 1 unit Ethernet Tag Manager - 1 unit
^ Yes, that will do you just fine. A couple of thoughts:
Consider the PIR model, which also gives you motion detection (which you may or may not want).
If you want to measure liquid temperature, there’s a probe that does that (looks like the product line now makes that separate - I was able to use the reed kumosensor.
I use Home Assistant for some general home automation stuff and made a wifi sensor for it that tracks air temp, humidity, and a bottle probe as well as light so I can get a reminder if I left the light on in the cellar (or if someone else went down there without me knowing it).
I insulated the cellar too well (foil faced foam with metallic tape on the outside) because I get zero RF in there, no cell, wifi, or bluetooth when the door is shut, so I had to remote wire it all through the wall.
It was all pretty involved with setup and assembly, but rewarding. If anyone on WB wants details, PM me.
I wasn’t wanting to measure liquid temps, I want to know if there is a leak or any water infiltration to my wine cellar, so I wanted a water sensor to detect if the floor gets wet. Did I select the right sensor for that?
I guess it depends on how large your cellar is, but if you have a good humidity sensor and your room is well sealed a leak on the floor will show up as a spike in the humidity.
A sealed container with free moisture will rise to 100% humidity if given enough water for the air to absorb. This is dependent on temperature, but if a bottle broke or outside water made its way in you’d see the jump with just the humidity.
If your cellar is huge, though, and you know one corner has a potential outside leak problem, then that’s a situation where a dedicated leak sensor would be necessary.
My cellar is pretty well sealed, as we used Closed Cell Spray Foam - but as it is in the lowest part of my basement, I am concerned if I am away and a pipe burst or some other flood happened, I would want to know much sooner than detecting humidity.
I do have some weep holes thru a common wall to my boiler room, which has a sump pump (all connected to generator for back up).
Zimberg - should look at Flo as they have sensor for quickly detecting pipe issue like you’re worried about. Was started by former Umami colleague of mine and just sold. I think most home owners policies will give you a discount for installing
Its funny how I never noticed threads like this before and then I asked the same question some time back and now I notice them more frequently. There’s a ton of great advice to be had in this forum.
Me, I’m in the wireless tag camp. It was a great recommendation from many on this board and can’t thank those folks enough. They are simple to set up and reasonable on cost. I have one that monitors air temp and humidity plugged in to the wall. And I recently went in on one that I rigged in to a bottle probe to measure liquid temp. Pic below. They work pretty well. I find they are about a degree off from my cellar cooling system’s bottle probe however I just account for that when setting alerts and looking at data.
