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Recommendation needed: Monitor vacation home, detect outages

We recently purchased a vacation home. It's in a fairly rural area. In spite of the best efforts of the local utilities, from time to time we lose power, and telephone service is, well, not exactly "first world" calibre. There is no cable, dsl, or even cell phone service available.

I'm looking for two sets of advice. First, when the power goes out for some time, the stuff in the fridge could go bad. Then the power comes back on, and cools every thing off. We come back, are unaware the power has been off long enough to harm food, and either take a chance on poisoning ourselves or we toss out perfectly good stuff. There must be a better way. Does anyone know of an instrument that can tell us how long the power has been out? Using an old fashioned mechanical electric clock helps, but doesn't go past

12 hours and doesn't tell us how long the longest outage was.

Second - any ideas for inexpensively monitoring the property? It might be nice to know the status of the HVAC, water pumps (run and temperature in pump house), inside temperature, and maybe even an inside camera. It would all have to be done over a very slow phone line.

I'm just starting to think about this. Clueless how to set up and hook up. Are there any references one can read?

thanks

Reply to
Crewzer
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There are plenty of digital thermometers that have a minimum/maximum memory. If you're worried about the food temp in the fridge more than the air temp, get one with a metal probe (not a wireless one), and stick the probe in a bottle of water in the fridge. If the water temp reaches 50 degrees, your food is probably bad. Of course your nose will probably tell you that as well.

Reply to
Shaun Eli

It wouldn't necessarily be cheap but HAI

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makes home automation systems that you can call that can tell you what the status of the power is, temperatures (indoor, or outdoor) humidity, HVAC (if you use thier thermostats) and any other things that can be monitored by a simple contact closure. You could also have it log power outages, or call you when the power is out.

Reply to
sprgns

Put ice cubes in a ziploc bag in the freezer. If power goes out they'll melt and lose their cube shape. If the power's off long enough, of course. That way you only need look in the freezer to see if they're still in cube shape. If it's refrozen it'll be the shape of the bag instead of cubes. Cheap and low tech.

-Bill Kearney

Reply to
wkearney99

won't the same thing happen though if it's a frost free freezer?

Reply to
sprgns

Uh, think about what you're asking here.

The frost-free part is geared toward avoiding humidity build-up and freezing, not to thawing the CONTENTS of the fridge. That'd be a HUGE health hazard and a damn dumb idea. The ice cubes in a bag are just contents, the same as any other foodstuff you'd have frozen in there with them.

Reply to
wkearney99

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