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- Verified Buyer
I never gave much thought to home monitors, but a recent string of powerful storms left me with extended electrical power outages and/or with heavy rains and the risk of water in the basement. Not too bad if I am around to deal with it, but not so good if I am at work or on a business trip or vacation.I Googled around and it seemed that the products by SensaPhone were probably the best, at least without going to a service-based approach where a monthly fee would be involved. But the lowest price Sensaphone was over $400, and I decided to look elsewhere.Enter the Reliance Controls model THP201 home monitor. This unit is about 16% of the cost of the lowest cost Sensaphone, and offers many of the most commonly needed features of that pricier unit. Reliance Controls is a well established US company that is better known for accessories for emergency electric generators for homes and small businesses. The THP201 is almost lost in their product line, and it has a confusingly named sibling, the THP202; usually a higher model number means a more capable unit, but in this instance the THP201 is the more deluxe model (THP202 has no water sensor).The THP201 does one thing only; it calls you on the phone if certain things go wrong at your property while you are away. You cannot call it and control the house remotely, as the Sensaphone and others can do. It does not interface (directly) with your security system; although you could rig it to call you if such a system goes into alarm mode (but this is not described by the instructions nor supported by Reliance...suffice it to say that the security system could be wired to interrupt power to the THP201, or be connected to its water sensor terminals, to cause an alarm condition that would result in a call being placed).The THP201 comes with the base unit and two kinds of wall mounting hardware (velcro and drywall anchors & screws). You can also mount it to cinderblock or concrete walls using Tapcons or similar, or use sheet metal or wood screws to fasten it to other kinds of walls or objects. It also comes with the water sensor on a 25 foot cord and a short telephone cord for connection to a nearby phone jack, plus a telephone cord coupler, some business card sized guides to keep with you or distribute to neighbors, etc; and the AC power supply (wall wart). A 9V battery is included, but based on what some others have written about its quality and/or charge condition, I recommend discarding it and putting in a new Duracell battery.The THP201 alarms on three conditions: loss of AC power (in which case it runs from the 9V battery), low temperature (suggesting a furnace failure and possible pipe freeze condition), and water sensed. You can disable the low temperature sensor (below 45 degrees F, not adjustable), which is internal to the base unit, using a small switch inside. You can disable the water sensor simply by leaving it unplugged from the base unit.The water sensor is actually just a pair of wires that run from the base unit to the point where you want to sense the water (probably near your basement's low point and/or sump pit area, or in a room prone to water leakage). For the first 25 feet, the pair of wires are inside a standard telephone cord, and near the sensing end there is a plastic box that serves to convert the wiring to a twin lead cable , as used in old TV antennas. You simply position the end of the twinlead at the point where you want to sense water, and if water touches it, the alarm goes off. Inside the plastic junction box are two heavy steel plates which add weight and keep the tension of the telephone cord from dragging the sensing wires around too easily. There is no special circuitry inside this box. The manual states that you can add a telephone extension cord of up to 100 feet in case the base unit is further away from where you want to sense water. Since this is a simple conductivity sensor, you can probably use a telephone line splitter adapter to rig up two such water sensors, although I have not tried this. Reliance does not list extra water sensors on their webpage, but you could just use the end of the second phone cord as the sensor, as long as you separate the conductors in the same manner as the one from the factory.The THP201 has switches for selecting pulse or tone type phone dialing, and for selecting either a 5 minute or 30 minute delay between sensing an alarm and calling you about it. It seems that almost everyone would prefer to be able to make such a selection for each of the alarm types, but you have to pick one that applies to all three.If you plug the base unit into the wall socket where an existing telephone was previously connected, the base unit has a socket where you can plug in the phone. You don't need to have a phone plugged in though. If you DO plug a phone in here, it will be disconnected automatically whenever the base unit is trying to access the phone line during an alarm condition. Any extension phones elsewhere in your premises would be unaffected.Once you have mounted the base unit and plugged in the optional water sensor and the wall wart power supply and telephone line, the unit is ready for use. You first need to program at least one phone number for it to call, although it can be programmed with up to three numbers. The base unit has a keypad for typing in the numbers, but no display to see what you are typing. Luckily, Reliance has included a test mode so you can be sure that the unit is working AND you have typed the correct phone number(s). For each of the programmed phone numbers, you can press a keypad combination that causes the unit to immediately enter alarm mode and place a call.When an alarm occurs, the base unit calls the first number, but if there is no answer after 10 rings it tries the second number (if any), and then the third number (if any), then repeats until it gets an answer. When it is answered, it immediately plays a short series of tones, then a recorded voice says something like, "Waring: Alarm condition: 1 beep for temperature, 2 beeps for power, three beeps for accessory (i.e. water sensor), long beep for multiple alarms. Press # to acknowledge or press * and 0 to disable". Then it plays the appropriate number of beeps or a tone. It repeats this message twice more before giving up. If the recipient of the call presses either # or * plus 0, the base unit considers the alarm to be satisfied, but otherwise will try the call again. If the recipient acknowledges by pressing #, the base unit goes back to monitoring mode, but will call again 1 hour later of the same alarm condition still exists, and will call in only 5 minutes if a different alarm condition is detected. If the recipient presses * and 0, the base unit turns off and will do not more monitoring or calling until reset using a switch on the front of the unit.I tested the unit with power off, with water sensed, and with both power off and water sensed; it was not practical to test for low temperature. The unit performed exactly as designed and described here. I had programmed it to call my cell phone, and even with the somewhat degraded voice quality inherent to cellular communications, I found the recorded voice to be intelligible.This seems to be a product of significant utility, and as far as I have found, it has no direct competition in its price range. The build quality is good, and the instructions, while not perfect, are at least in clear English and not some poor translation from Chinese or Japanese. It is easy and quick to set up, and looks like it will last for many years.NOTE: The THP201 is designed for connection to a tradition land-line type phone system. If you want to use it with a newer system that works via your computer or internet or TV cable, you will want to consider adding a small UPS to that system, if it does not already have one. This is because a traditional land-line is self powered, while the other systems are not. In case of a power outage, the THP201's internal 9V battery will keep it working, but the same power outage can disable the computer or cable based phone system, so no call would be possible. With a UPS on such a system, it could remain operational long enough for the THP201 to place its call.
