Failed Circuit Alarm

After losing several freezer loads of food from not noticing when lightning tripped the circuit, I shopped around and settled in this product. Not too cheap but not over the top in price, either. The alarm is loud enough in our main level garage not to be missed on the main level of the house. Easy to install, test and figure out. Pretty simple, actually, and the piggy back plug is a good feature. If I were to suggest an improvement it would be to assemble without screws into plastic. I think a snap on or clip to marry the top half to the bottom half would make more sense, be easier and make changing the battery more convenient. Overall, great product for the money.

Accomplished the goal. It's a simple device that works great and does not drain the battery unless it's in alarm. I would have given it 5 stars, but it trips instantly, even for brown outs. Would be much better if it waited a few seconds to confirm an outage before going into full alarm, but I do appreciate that its simplicity will likely result in better reliability as there are less things to break. If you are looking an instant notification the millisecond there is a power cut, then this device is for you. If you have unreliable power and don't want it to nag you for brown outs but do want to know if there is a long term outage, look for something else.

We added a small 7.0 cu. ft chest freezer in the garage with our spare refrigerator. Having these appliances out there concerned me after a lightning storm fried a GFCI outlet and killed the refrigerator for a day. I couldn't run dedicated power to both of these, so I wanted to know if the breaker ever tripped (GFCI or in breaker box). I love the pass through plug it has, which makes it easy to add anywhere without taking up an outlet. The battery install was straight forward, but there wasn't much room inside for the battery and I had to play with it a little to get the cover back on. I installed it in the garage on an outlet just outside the garage door and turned it on. I then went to the GFCI and hit the "Test" button, killing all the outlets. WOW! that buzzer is loud. I could easily hear it inside. I reset the GFCI outlet and the buzzer stopped. Then I tested the main breaker for the garage and same thing happened. Perfect. And with the little "Test" button on the alarm itself, it's easy to just give it a tap to make sure the internal battery isn't dead anytime I walk by it going in/out of the house.You should know, however, that this alarm only looks at the power supply. If my refrigerator or freezer quit due to an internal electrical or mechanical failure, this alarm would not sound. It only works on a loss of supply power (breaker trips, GFCI trips, power outage, etc). So far we haven't had any issues with the freezer and refrigerator running on the same circuit in the garage. However, I think the real test will be during the hotter summer months when they run more often and things heat up.

Bought this failed circuit alarm after trying the Reliance Controls THP207. That volume on that alarm was just too low to ensure I'd hear it in the lower level of my home where I have a small freezer in the back storage area. This device is considerably louder because it relies on a 9V battery, but I still wish it were louder - I can hear it clearly anywhere in the lower level of the home, but it is much more faint on the main level. If the circuit you are concerned about is anywhere near a "main" living space, this should be adequate (test it periodically as designed). Still, it's the best I've found for the money so far.

This device works as advertised. On 28 July 2009 we received some very heavy thunderstorms that tripped a ground fault circuit breaker on the circuit the garage freezer was plugged in. We could hear the alarm even though we had a DVD movie playing somewhat loudly. We had no indication that there were power problems as the lights never flickered in the main part of the house. Without this alarm, we would have gone to bed and most likely not even have noticed the unit had no power for nearly 24 hours or more.Very handy device as it prevented a recurrence of a food loss we had earlier this year due to weather. We had just stocked that freezer the day before the storms hit. We have had two losses of food stuffs over the past several years when the circuit breaker on that unit tripped. This would have been the third as we don't often go into that freezer and the first sign that there is a problem is the water from the unit defrosting.As I mentioned above, we could hear the alarm within the house clearly enough to alert us that the power had failed on that circuit. The alarm is piercingly loud when in the same room - probably on par with a smoke alarm though the alarm on this unit is a steady tone.So, well worth the money...it basically just paid for itself the other night just a couple of weeks after we received the unit. Which by the way, was delivered as promised, on time.

The product works as described, but there is a very important flaw in its design. You must install a 9-volt battery inside the case. The battery operates the alarm buzzer which sounds when the unit detects a power failure. The big problem is that, when you remove two screws and open the case to access the battery, you are also at risk of coming in contact with live 110-volt electricity unless you have pulled the plug from your electric outlet. There is a warning about this on the label attached to the front of the unit. At the very least, this warning should be printed in a different color (perhaps red) than the rest of the label. But to truly solve this dangerous issue, the battery compartment should be completely separated from the live electrical circuits inside the case, so that accessing the battery can be done without opening the part of the case where the 110-volt circuits are. A product such as this should be UL approved, and I am sure that Underwriters Laboratories would never approve of the current design of this product.