Turning Off My Well.

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
1

I’ve learned the hard way that it is smart to turn off your water supply on a vacation home when no one is there. That is because a plastic connector broke which dumped in 10,000 gallons into my basement. I had $15K of damage and lost rental income. I am now a wee-bit paranoid of this happening again.

I have a well at my lake home and I would love to be able to electronically turn off the well. Right now I throw the breaker. But once again, I forgot to do throw the breaker and I won’t be there for several weeks. So I am looking for automated solution. I assume that that there are no ZWAVE GE panel breakers. That would be a dream come true!

I also know there are expensive valve solutions like Fortrezz. See Fortrezz Water Valve Demo 2 Full Length.avi - YouTube . But that requires a plumber and about $500 worth of hardware. Frankly, I don’t need a sensor. I just want to be able to turn on and off a valve.

I also haev another idea. Has anyone had success with re-wiring their well pump so that it plugs into a wall outlet?? Do they make a Zwave outlet to handle 220V and 1000 watts of power??? I THINK my pump is 220V single phase.

Any thoughts??

2

Run a search on “Contactor” on the forums. There are a bunch of different threads on people using these, controlled via a regular Appliance Module, to meet the High Voltage and/or Amperage and/or Load-Type requirements of the thing they’re looking to control via Z-Wave.

eg. Spa’s, Electric Water Heaters, etc, etc.

3

You could get an elk products 9200 contactor and plug it into a zwave appliance module or zwave outlet.

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4

I also need to control a well pump, can someone tell me what happens if there is a power loss in the 110 control circuit? Does the relay stay in its “current status” or wil it default to connected or disconnected?

5

@pgrover516,

In the Elk 9200, the contactor will be in the open state (load disconnected) when the control voltage is either not present or removed.

JOD.

6

[quote=“JOD, post:5, topic:169587”]@pgrover516,

In the Elk 9200, the contactor will be in the open state (load disconnected) when the control voltage is either not present or removed.

JOD.[/quote]
Thanks @JOD, as ever a fount of information 8)
Now I wonder since the 110 circuit has to be energized to maintain the 220 connection how much electricity would it use just to keep that 220 circuit alive even when the pump is not running?

7

Elk lists the coil draw at <35ma

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8

Thanks, that’l work

9

That’s $4 a year @ 11 cents per KWH. Cheap piece of mind. I think the nicest way is a ball valve in line. They run about $200ish and I suspect I can do it myself.