How to Handle Water Alarms

apostolakisl

Senior Member
After living in my house for two years and having pre-wired for water alarms, I finally got around to installing them. I have the gri 2800 units.

Now, of course, the first time the cleaning people came they set it off. Turns out they spilled a bucket of water in the master bath and the water went under the cabinet facing on the tub deck and got the sensor under the bath tub. The alarm went off and every time my wife reset it, it of course re-alarmed. That tub deck facing requires a special tool to remove the panels and get under the tub, which my wife couldn't do. I wasn't available at the time (at work), so this went on for an hour before I could log on remotely and bypass the zone.

Question is, how would you handle this?

What I have done for starters, is create a task on my elk that bypasses all of the water zones. How are other people managing this situation?

The 2800 is a normally open contactor that shorts when it gets wet. It is not powered, it just has the two leads that hook to a zone. And they do work quite well!
 
After living in my house for two years and having pre-wired for water alarms, I finally got around to installing them. I have the gri 2800 units.

Now, of course, the first time the cleaning people came they set it off. Turns out they spilled a bucket of water in the master bath and the water went under the cabinet facing on the tub deck and got the sensor under the bath tub. The alarm went off and every time my wife reset it, it of course re-alarmed. That tub deck facing requires a special tool to remove the panels and get under the tub, which my wife couldn't do. I wasn't available at the time (at work), so this went on for an hour before I could log on remotely and bypass the zone.

Question is, how would you handle this?

What I have done for starters, is create a task on my elk that bypasses all of the water zones. How are other people managing this situation?

The 2800 is a normally open contactor that shorts when it gets wet. It is not powered, it just has the two leads that hook to a zone. And they do work quite well!

I wouldn't bypass them all, I would just bypass the offending sensor until it dries out.

But why is water leaking underneath your facing? That probably shouldn't be happening. Sounds like you need to caulk or otherwise waterproof that area.
 
I wouldn't bypass them all, I would just bypass the offending sensor until it dries out.

But why is water leaking underneath your facing? That probably shouldn't be happening. Sounds like you need to caulk or otherwise waterproof that area.

Yes, I will be caulking that.

You don't know how long it took me to teach my wife how to execute "tasks". I just don't know if I can teach her to identify the troubled zone, and bypass it only.
 
This type of situation is where CQC (or something like it) becomes more valuable. I am putting in water sensors, too, and will set up a CQC panel on a 19" wide-screen touchscreen monitor that will be displayed when an M1G water alarm goes off. Haven't designed the panel yet, but the it will make it visually obvious as to which water sensor(s) set off the alarm, and how to bypass it, e.g., touch the water alarm icon that is flashing red.

Although, having a backup plan (like your M1G task to bypass all water sensors) is a good idea, too.

Ira
 
This type of situation is where CQC (or something like it) becomes more valuable. I am putting in water sensors, too, and will set up a CQC panel on a 19" wide-screen touchscreen monitor that will be displayed when an M1G water alarm goes off. Haven't designed the panel yet, but the it will make it visually obvious as to which water sensor(s) set off the alarm, and how to bypass it, e.g., touch the water alarm icon that is flashing red.

Ira

+1 on the Automation user friendly layer. My wife can turn stuff on and off with her Android phone client to CQC, win!

-Ben
 
It appears that you can not bypass a water zone. Now I really need some ideas. Teaching her how to disable a zone is really not going to fly.
 
add a relay to disconnect the offending zone? this would not be economical for a lot of zones, but would work for one or two critical issue areas
 
I'd do a relay, but shouldn't a rule be able to bypass the zone? Don't have access to my lab trainer system to test.

I have 10 water zones, so that's kind of a lot of relays. I could probably tie all the commons together and use one relay to interupt them as a group (the gri 2800's are normally open circuit).

And when I try to bypass a water zone, it just gives me that funky "UHHHHNG" sound. Also, in Elk RP Status page, the spot you put a check mark to bypass the zone is greyed out for all water zones.

I was thinking maybe you could silence the alarm, but let it keep being in alarm state (so it only calls central station once). But I can't find a way to set a task to do that. I only find that on the status page in elk rp.
 
If you end up using relays, you could use 924's and it'd be half the amount and you'd be able to drive them off the trigger outputs pretty easy, either on the panel or an XOVR.

I just peeked at RP and you're given the option to have the zone bypassable or not and you can also set up an automation rule to bypass any zone, it's allowing me to make a rule to bypass the fire alarm. Haven't benched it in a panel, but RP is allowing me to do it.
 
Yes, it is bypassable, it just doesn't default to that. I need to check the box in the zone setup section. Thanks for pointing that out.
 
I think I have the best plan figured out.

I set the water zones to silent alarm.

I wrote a rule:

Whenever every 60 seconds
And any water alarm, any area is active
Then Announce Water

I also set the zones to bypassable.

Now, in the event of a water zone tripping, this should call central station, announce "water" in the house once per minute, and not sound any sirens.
 
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