I used the following great code (adapted from code courtesy Jack Kinsella) to do a manual backup download to your local machine: Put this code in a file called "download_db". Change permissions to 744 (for example). Works on Linux (especially Ubuntu). Replace app-name with your app name.

#!/bin/bash

# This script will download a backup of the database to your local machine.
# Follow me: @jackkinsella

# How to use:
# cd to app directory.
# bash script/download_db

function LastBackupName () {
heroku pgbackups –app app-name | tail -n 1 | cut -d"|" -f 1
}

heroku pgbackups:capture –app app-name –expire
new_backup=$(LastBackupName)
curl $(heroku pgbackups:url –app app-name $new_backup) > app-name-dB-backup.dump

Some very cool features, like transferring db's between Heroku apps.

Check it out: http://docs.heroku.com/pgbackups

http://docs.heroku.com/backups

You might need to run this on an EC2 instance or some other machine you have (I don't think it can push remotely, nor do I think that you have temporary storage available on Heroku), but worth pointing out as a sanctioned alternative to pg_dump

I think this will make it more flexible, e.g. you can have a button on your admin dashboard to do a manual S3 backup…

http://rubygems.org/gems/heroku_s3_backup

http://groups.google.com/group/heroku/browse_thre…

…where Andy Shipman shows how he's backing up his database to Dropbox using this same basic technique.

It's got me wondering if there's a way to make another separate Heroku app which checks your db dumps periodically, loads them, and reports any errors.