Using water detector in sump crock

First, let me describe what I wanted to accomplish.  There are a lot of water detecters which you can place outside fo a sump crock to tell you the crock is overflowing.  In my mind, this is way too late as by that point you already have a big problem starting.  What I wanted is something I could put in the crock, above where the water line normally is so I could be alarmed of a failure in the pump BEFORE it overflows - giving me time to address the problem.  Also, my wife and I travel and can be gone 1-3 months at a time.  Since we have a Simplisafe system, I wanted to use the Simplisafe water detector since that would be monitored and we would be called if the sensor alerted.  What I have works, but it's VERY low tech, so don't laugh!

The problem is that the Simplisafe water detector (like almost all others) sits on the floor and can alarm you once the crock overflows.  They also don't provide a way to place it down in the crock like I wanted.  Additionally, I was concerned that with the sensor in the crock, and sort of small splash in the crock could cause a false alarm.  So what I did is to take a small clear plastic box, I drilled a number of holes in the top and bottom of the box, and planned to place the sensor in that.  I was also concerned though that since the sensor was sensitive it could still be subject to false alarms so I placed a small piece of dense foam in the bottom of the box to place the sensor on to keep it off the bottom of the box.  The thought is if the water really were to rise due to a failed pump, it would enter the holes in the bottom of the box, filling it over the foam, and finally tripping the sensor.

Finally, I needed to attach the sensor down in the crock.  All I did for this is to use electrical tape to tape the box I made to the side of the drain pipe from the sump pump just above the high water level when the pump is working.  So far this has worked in that we have not had any false alarms with this.  We have not had a pump fail, but I have pretty good confidence were one to fail that the sensor would alert with this setup.

I'm somewhat surprised that there doesn't appear to be any water sensors with alerting designed to handle this situation.  Certainly a sensor on the floor outside the crock is better than nothing, but it sure seems that it would be very useful for those with sump pumps to be alerted before the overflow.  It sure seems that existing systems could develop something like this which would allow their existing sensors to be mounted to allow for for a proactive response.

I wanted to add a picture of this, but it doesn't look like that is allowed.  The description should let you know how it is built though.  If you have any further questions, please let me know.