Wayne AU5ES Electronic Probe Switch

I really hated the idea of paying for this -- it costs more than my sump pump! However I have a sump hole in my crawl space that manages to collect a lot of junk, the pump jumps around a bit and its guaranteed to jam the float and require me to crawl on my knees in water to fix it. So I took the plunge -- it is the best switch I've ever used, with its delay adjustment, it is capable of emptying the sump hole every time it fills up. Since the relay is sensitive to the AC line, it switches only when there are 0 volts going through the relay -- this same trick is used in the good computer UPS systems, thus it eliminates arching between the contacts, and any indication that the power source has changed. You average float switch won't do that!It uses a wire to sense the water level, and it expects that your pump is grounded. This wire must be fastened to a reliable place to sense the water level correctly. The timer should be adjusted to empty the sump-hole, but avoid pumping air into the output hose.This was well spent money, I just wish Amazon sold it directly, so I could have gotten free shipping :-)I've had it installed for a couple of weeks, so far, and its been a pleasure to see it work flawlessly.

My sump pump cycles very frequently, this pump controller worked flawlessly for about the first year. Now it does not function, due to the contact on the mechanical relay being burned out. Much to my surprise the relay is not even replaceable so the entire unit must be now replaced. I would never buy this unit again.

The unit works fine and it is MUCH better than a tethered floater but, in my case, only doing half of the job in empting the well because of the one minute time limitation.My well barrel is larger than the "standard bucket" so in one minute only 1/2 of it gets emptied and the sump-pump kicks in twice as often as it would if the unit timer would allow a longer operation i.e. two minutes.Still a good buy (I now have two units) but an area of improvement the manufacturer can work on.

I would have an extremely wet basement if it weren't for the efforts of my pumps. After having the mechanical switches on two pumps fail last winter, I decided to try a different setup. I'm now running a small pump that does not have any switching as the primary, and another, larger capacity pedestal pump as a back-up if the small pump fails or gets overwhelmed by volume.This controller and a $90 plastic pump have seen a 10-20% duty cycle for several consecutive months without a hitch. I've tried diaphragm and float switches as well, but none were as easy to set-up or worked as well is this one.I'm not sure how long it will last in the end, but it's lasted longer than ANY of the other solutions I've tried. Based on that experience, it's paid for itself already, and I'll buy another if this one fails.BTW... I have it set to run for a full 60-seconds if water is sensed, and I've adjusted the sensor (wire) height so that the audible alarm won't trip. The alarm seems to trip if it senses water for more than a few seconds. With the way I have it set up, the water level drops before the alarm goes off. The alarm is pretty loud if you want that feature and have it set up with a shorter time cycle.UPDATE - This has been my primary automatic sump pump controller for well over a year now. We've had some wet times when the little plastic pump connected to a garden hose couldn't keep up, but my big cast iron pump was able to pick-up the slack. The sensor wire does get corroded after a few months of use, but there's plenty of wire attached and all I've had to do is snip an inch off the end and strip the insulation... like new! I am 100% +++ satisfied with this purchase. It's the best solution I've found for running a non-automatic pump as a full-time solution in my wet basement.

This switch worked great for about a year, and then it failed. Fortunately, I have a backup monitor (Rialco Flood Alarm) that alerted us to the problem. It turned out that the sensor wire was not making contact to the water, even when submerged. I checked the sensor wire, and found that it had hardly any conductor exposed. So I cut off three feet of the wire, stripped off an inch of insulation, and coated it with solder to help make sure that it makes contact with the water, and now all is working again.Note that the AU5ES has its own alarm that is supposed to sound if the water does not go down in a specified period of time, but since the sensor wire was not working, that alarm did not work either. So always have a backup alarm that has its own sensor wires, and hope that they don't both fail at the same time. You can never be too careful with sump pumps, but this is a good product overall.

I've owned two AU5ES FloodAlert sump pump controllers. Purchased first one in 2006 through Amazon. Bought the second one in 2009 at ACE Hardware store after the first one failed. That one failed in 2011. I've had better results using float switches that come with the pumps so I'm not buying another FloodAlert. Really too bad because it seems like a great product concept and it did work - even the audible high water alarm function - for a couple years. I disassembled the both failed units and saw no obvious problems (like burned out relay mentioned in another review). Did notice some corrosion on battery terminals but not enough to prevent it from working.