Update: My neighbor has a D-Link water-detection alarm which uses a sensor to detect water and sends a wifi message if water is detected.
UNFORTUNATELY both the sump pump and the detector / alarm were plugged into the same power strip which got unplugged resulting in a wet carpet! This poorly designed system has no way to report a failure and depends on wifi running and not changeing!
With the approach I outlined above the monitoring software detects that there is no readings from the ruuvi (like if it runs out of battery) and reports a failure!
Guess I will be installing a RaspberryPi and a Ruuvi in their basement soon!