Depth of water sensing 1

[alternety]

I would like to monitor the water depth in well. Maximum depth is 500" and minimum is 0'.

I have been thinking pressure sensor but everything I have found is quite expensive packaged sensors.

Any ideas on other ways to monitor depth or sources of something I can use for a sensor in a 500' well.

 

[Skogsgurra]

The mother of all threads...

Winter is coming to the northern hemisphere. I hope you all are doing well (find pun). At least those of you that don't thrive on hot air. Sometimes so hot that it smokes (find pun).

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

 

[itsmoked]

sheesh...

I won't mention that the control transformer on my new furnace just through a lamination... It started buzzing soooo loudly that I just turned the furnace off...

40VA.... 70dBA screwed to large sheet-metal panel.

What is it with noisy heating systems?!?!?!?!

 

[VEBill]

Sometimes my baseboard electric heaters are very noisy ('tick tick tick' due to thermal expansion and contraction). The fix is to wander over and give them a swift kick - that usually shuts them up for the season. Once in a while, if things are really really quiet , you can hear the relays in the basement click over.

 

[VisiGoth]

There is nothing better than radiant heat. No dust blowing gas forced air, no artificial drying of the air and it is much quieter. Although with warm water baseboards, the thermal change might be slower, but that jus makes the creaking and ticking last longer!

Now, where are the engineer that are going to make a quiet radiant heat system that is cost competitive enough to become the standard in even low cost housing?

 

[alternety]

A simple system should not be too bad price wise. But comnponents are expensive. If you do a slab on grade with radiant and do just one or two zones it is pretty straight forward. A home owner can lay the PEX (heat piping) to save some cost. Against a low end "scorched air" system it is probaly nor cheaper but if you go for a high efficiency air furnace it maght work out better.

It should be very quiet. My boiler, a Weil-Mclean ultra, is so quiet you sort of have to look at the displays to see if it is heating. Other small constant speed pumps are also very quiet.

Use an indirect water heating from the boiler and it saves the cost of a hot water heater (and periodic replacement), gives more of a hot water supply and runs at appreciably higher efficiency than standalone water heaters. The boilers are direct vent so no chimeny; just some PVC pipe, No interior combustion air is used in sealed systems. They use a parallel or concentric PVC pipe.

If done correctly there should be no expansion/contraction noises in the systems feeding the floor.

There are many possible variants.

 

[itsmoked]

alternety; Have you considered using a pump per loop?
Don't laugh. You could probably use the absolute smallest least expensive pump found, a tiny Taco or whatever. All your noise problems would probably vanish. Certainly your pressure/flow control expense, complexity and hassle would be avoided. You could possibly use, on certain loops, one pump for two loops. Etc. Your control would come down to heat called for? => turn on the pump. You could even rid yourself of solenoid valves.

Ah yes another brilliant suggestion!

 

[alternety]

That would be pretty hard to implement. There are 6 sub-manifolds buried in walls. Each one of these has a bunch of loops. Some zones have more than one loop. I would still have the same problems with pressure accross sub-manifolds.

The other thing is that this pump actually circulates the hot water from the buffer tank to make it available to the sub manifolds at a fairly even temperature. This is a secondary loop. I am not completely sure even 6 pumps would work correctly with the existing piping.

I am still trying to get info on the system approach. The Taco 0012 has a much flatter curve and seems to me to be a better approach to variable speed because it feels like less pressure varaition is necessary for control. A couple of people have said that the Tacos are quieter. You were one who mentioned them. My contractor says he stopped using them because they were too noisy. I asked him to see if he can find and installation where I could actually hear a 0012.

Still doing wiring (low voltage). Talk about more time than I ever eexpected.

 

[itsmoked]

Man... this sounds like a grand scheme that has really gotten out of hand.

Well.... let me know after you're done playing..

I know how to install forced air systems now..

And VE1BLL can help with baseboards.

 

[wagnerc]

Alt if u can live a few more years u should apply for the job of Starship Engineer. :-D

 

[Warpspeed]

Now you are talking. A thermal hybrid booster hooked up to the warp drive engine.

 

[itsmoked]

Heck, just shoot a rock with a Phasor.

 

[theohunt]

Have you got a handle on how a simple bubbler system would work?

 

[itsmoked]

Groan.... You obviously haven't read this entire thread like a good boy... Have you?

 

[Warpspeed]

Life is so short.

 

[alternety]

As noted - it is up there. Someday I might try to get a tube down the hole. Until then, measuring pump current is reasonably accurate.

For those of you following the saga - the heating system is "fixed"!!

Fix sucks, but it is a fix. Variable speed pump was removed and replaced with a fixed speed pump from the same manufacturer. The noise seemes to be associated with the speed control but not particularly with the actual speed setting. This makes no sense to me. A full-on TRIAC should not mess with the motor noise characteristics. We sent a pump back and the factory listened, the distributer came and listened, a factory rep came up from Seattle and listened, everyone said yeah, thats normal. But, as requested, the rep brought a fixed speed pump. We first swapped a newer generation controller on the installed pump. Noise level seemed to change but actually worse. New pump is the next smaller unit. Quite expensive pressure sensing system is providing esthetic interest to the wall with the numbers on the backlit LCD.

A bypass valve was added to work with the pump. Looks a bit funky because there was no space left on the wall.

System is now near silent; as it should be.

That was two weeks ago. We finally got the antifreeze in the system on Thursday so I can stop circulating water through the inside and outside loops to try to keep things from freezing. No heat, just moving the water among the masses. We had to get the system fixed and purged of air before the antifreeze. I also can now stop watching the weather so avidly to see just how cold they expect it to get at night. It has been in the upper 20's a few times.

Other things progress slowly. We had to replace the installed outside doors and replace the jambs for several more (bad measurements by one of the builders). Taking the first door apart showed the previous high priced talent did a half-assed caulking job. I seem to have been unable to explain to most of them that it is either caulked or not caulked - there is no mostly caulked or caulked enough to get the bastard owner off our butts. The also did not actually fasten the door into the house with anyhthing but a few finishing nails in the brick mould (which is itself only lightly attached to the door). I had to have steel plates made to make any reasonable attachment of the deadbolt to the building. It seems to be a "standard" construction among doors that the latch points have very little ability to actually hit any strong part of the door framing. As delivered, two screws just get inside the edge of the 2X and two get in about 3/4" back from the edge of the 2X. Not too hard to break down.

I went to install an exhasut fan and discovered they had installed the 3" thick wooden mounting plate they made, upside down and backwards. The fan is non-symetric and I had to pry out the wood which was already mortered into the stone wall. Stone will have to be removed and repaired to allow the properly oriented wood to be installed. Power wires need to be relocated and there is esentially no access space inside the wall. While playing with this I discovered that, unlike what I told him to do and what the guy said he had done, there was not a drop of sealant anywhere in the assembly. Nowhere. Direct paths from the drain plane and stone into the sheathing and interior wall. He installed other mounting plates in the stone wall.

I also believe I am over achieving on the amount of low voltage wire installed.

Don't say it.

 

[itsmoked]

I won't...

Glad you got your silence at last.

Sorry about the construction short falls. Sounds like you have to personally inspect stuff before it is covered up and include that in the contract in LARGE letters.

 

[VEBill]

"...construction short falls..."

If you accidently stumble across a couple of needles without really trying, then you can rest assured that the haystack probably contains many more needles.


Data point:

We had a storm and electric power failure over the weekend. The power went out at about 3am early Saturday morning. The outside temperature was below freezing all day on Saturday. By bedtime on Saturday night, still no power and no source of heat (house is all electric), the house temperature was down to...

...+19C (about66F).

Passive solar, good insulation.

 

[itsmoked]

Indeed! Though I can't imagine why You don't have an awesome back up generator.

When I had an aircraft carrier deck mounted generator I'd throw extension cords over all my neighbor's fences so they could run a few lights and their refrigerators. They liked that!

 

[alternety]

Where on earth did you find the room to park an aircraft carrier?

 

[itsmoked]

Naw didn't STILL have it attached. However I'm sure that the Carrier it was removed from came up a foot on its water line when they removed it. It was a 5kW generator that (get this) was 36 inches in diameter and 30 inches long. The outer generator housing was steel 1-7/8 inch thick. It was powered by a water-cooled in-line industrial 4 with a gravity cooling system. All mounted on a 2-1/4 inch thick solid Cast Iron skid that was 6 feet by 3 feet.

I know what they went thru building the Pyramids.