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 State of the Tank: (cont.) |
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was pessimist but I’m not, I’d say was the third most likely time a system malfunction of this kind would occur. And obviously I couldn’t hear it if I was out all day running errands (the second most likely time) or worse yet, out of town or on vacation (the absolute far-and-away number one most likely time). I even toyed with the idea of rigging a device through a computer modem and using one of those Medical Alert services so if the temperatures should climb, the tank itself would alert them and they, in turn, would call me. This is completely feasible, by the way, but obscenely cost prohibitive. It also tended to make all the medical alert representatives giggle, which was not the response I was looking for.
So, much like the webcam idea, I sat it on the back burner for a while. After all, in case of a power outage, I DO have the home’s entire electrical system on a huge back-up generator… And I DO have a secondary chiller plumbed in line in case the primary goes down for mechanical reasons... And then there’s the fact that it’s been a long time since the temperature in the tank actually HAS risen above acceptable levels…
Yeah, I’d be okay I guess... That is, until I left the friggin’ house for ten minutes only to come back to 500 gallons of gumbo! |
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Then, while flipping through the pages of the newest Aquatic Ecosystems catalogue, we came upon a device called the Voice Dialer from Control Products Inc. According to the accompanying caption, this little device not only would allow me to set a temperature parameter (this was the ‘intermediate’ model, the ‘advanced’ Voice Dialer allows the setting of BOTH high and low parameters), but should this parameter be exceeded, the device would call up to three separate phone numbers, up to 16 times each, and send the recipient a recorded voice warning of the problem. We were ecstatic. This was EXACTLY what we looking for. The price, I believe, was around $279.00.
We excitedly began to install it the very day arrived [the actual device that came was called the FreezeAlert, not the Voice Dialer as advertised, but it looked the same so I wasn’t overly concerned at this point] but to avoid any problems, Ray decided to call the company (Control Products) and find out if the probe could be fully immersed in the water or if a coating of epoxy should be applied to the top. Apparently, he had this problem before with some probe and was just calling to be sure.
Imagine his surprise when he was told that the probe wasn’t meant to be immersed in the water at all! |
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