Comments on: Accident-proof Water Tank

By: Lifeboat Farm » Arduino water level gauge

Lifeboat Farm » Arduino water level gauge — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 01:18:20 +0000

[...] Our main water tank for the farm is out of view of the house so a visual water level gauge wouldn’t be much use. Most of the time we can only tell when the tank is empty the hard way, although I’ve added some plumbing to the tank so we always have some water in reserve. [...]

By: Martin H.

Martin H. — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:17:14 +0000

John is right. You should try a safety valve used for inlet hoses of washing machines. It is mounted between the hose and the tap and shall close when the hose breaks or comes loose from the washing machine.
They are marketed under the names Aquastop or Waterblock in Germany.

By: John

John — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:53:16 +0000

Your solution sounds sexy Rob (and don’t think I haven’t thought about something like that :) but mine requires no batteries.

That said, there IS a mechanical solution that does the same thing as yours – a valve that shuts off if preset flow rate and time are exceeded. It’s set with pins and uses the movement of the water to actuate the closing mechanism (presumably some sort of screw/spring thing). I knew a guy in Auckland that imported them from Belgium I believe, must track him down…

By: Kay

Kay — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:35:58 +0000

Nice tidy solution to one of those ongoing problems…

We fixed ours by filling the troughs out of a 1000 litre tank – that way the most we lose is the 1000 litres. However we do have to refill the small tank from the large tank.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:31:54 +0000

I’m disappointed! Such a low-tech solution – I was expecting wireless mesh devices tracking flow rates and alerting you via Farm PDA/SMS when flow rate exceeds x for longer than y, perhaps also automatically activating a servo to shut the valve off until reset by a return SMS :)