Gadget idea - Water left in the barrel.

If it's not already obvious, I am well into home designed gadgets to make life just that bit easier.

A useful thing to know, is how much water is remaining in my 50L Waterhog, or at least it would be good to know if there is enough water left, before I start taking a shower - without having to go out and check the barrel. One idea I tried was a cheap digital water meter, fitted in line with the pump's pressure switch, under a bed locker. It has a button to zero the reading, so a simple matter to fill the barrel and zero the meter. How of the 50L you had used, was then a simple bit of maths to know what was left in the barrel. The only problem was it counted up, rather than down to zero and more importantly its accuracy - around 5% - ish, depending how you had used the water. So it works, but could be better.

Another gadget I fitted to my water system, is an alarm. Nothing is more certain to wreck a submersible pump, than it running dry and at £50/£60 each for the high flow - they are expensive and the pumps running outside are inaudible and the pressure switch system will run them until such time as you happen to notice. The simple fix was to add a 12v piezo sounder, with built in oscillator connected between -ve and the pressure switch output. Every time the pump runs, there is an annoying noise from the sounder, but you learn to ignore it - unless it continues, then you switch the pump off.

Getting back to sensing the amount of water remaining in the barrel....

I wouldn't really want something which I would need to attach to the barrel, or have to plug in outside. One way would be to sample the pump's current - as the water level goes down, the pump and it's motor will have to work harder to raise the water and thus draw more current. Once it begins to draw more the a set amount of current, it puts a low water warning LED on.