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]

Smoked!? Where are you?

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

 

[VEBill]

felixc is Posting #200.
skogsgurra is Reply #200.
Congratulations.
Next milestone is 250.

Snakes are reptilian, not mammalian. Check for nipples.

 

[itsmoked]

.
Where am I?

In the A T T I C!!

Putting in my furnace...
Trying to not have any of my three friends, wife or kids that are helping, put any of their feet thru the plaster.

Trying to put a 4 x 8 ft sheet of 3/4" plywood thru a 3-8" access followed by a 140lb furnace. Running gas lines, drain lines, electricity and vent pipes.

Pouring thru the furnace manual that is 40 pages of solid 8-point type. Sorting out updrafts, downdrafts, counter
flow, alternate left and right horizontal mounting....

All day tomorrow too.

As much trouble as alternety is having.. I am glad I went with forced air.


This thread? In a nut-shell, {as taken from a small animal}....

A guy wants to measure his deepwell water depth to; 1) prevent the pump from running dry; 2) control the pump to maximize production.

Instead of buying a purpose built down hole pressure transducer (not cheap but the definitive solution), which is a drop in the bucket against the rest of the $70k installation and then strapping it to the pipe and installing it with the pump, he instead:

Puts the pump wayyyyyyyyy down a well and THEN asks us for "cheap" well depth monitor.

Many problematic and Rube Goldbird suggestions are brought forth. Ultimately one is attempted that results in a stuck/trapped/tangled rat's-nest-of-sorrow halfway down.

To allow psychological aquifer recharge: Problem and solution temporarily abandoned.

Because the victi...er individual lives north of the 35 latitude he notices while sacrificing small animals that their fur is getting thick and luxurious. His thoughts turn to preventing death thru exposure, frost bite and the inevitable gangrene that follows.

He turns his focus to his insanely complex heating system. A virtual tinkerers Nirvana! Sadly, it evolves into his personal, family-sized, Chernobyl!

His thousand dollar "nearly silent" Grundfos circulation pump sounds like 15kAmps surging thru electrodes into a 100 tons of bauxite!

His crack installer followed all the rules installing the pump. Sadly it made no difference.

The "air was bled from the system". Sadly it made no difference.

A new pump was wrestled into place. Sadly it made no difference.

More animals died. Sadly it made no difference.

Now he is looking for a different brand pump. Sadly IT will make no difference.

 

[Skogsgurra]

Thanks Smoked. I think that I got the whole picture now. You saved me a lot of reading up and also - I understand now - some painful reading experiences.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

 

[alternety]

Acutally itsmoked, it really is not that complicated. And I have detected almost no radiation leakage outside my property. It is a high end system but that is mostly a function of a large number of zones and the controls for the system. The system controls are normal Tekmar devices built for this sort of thing. The only thing really different is the variable speed pump instead of constant speed with a pressure bypass. The variable sped pump is used in commercial work to keep energy costs down. We figure that the Grundfoss people don't think the pump is noisy because it is mostly used in commercial installations where no one cares if it is noisy in a room full of big stuff. Hence they have had "no warranty returns" on the pump.

Noise wise (not having aluminum refining experience) I was thinking more along the lines of those machines that chew up trees.

Good luck on your installation. It sounds like a lot of fun. I spent yesterday gluing cap stones along one side of the foundation. I got tired of working inside, the weather was good so I did that to help out the guys putting up stone.

I have a couple of pictures of the reactor room but I don't think this board allows posting them.

 

[felixc]

Sound deadening systems for pipes? Pump grumble or cavitation noise? There are systems to reduce noise in pipe systems, but more the kind of noise generated by faucets and valves. I know about this one: www. cali.ca but they don't have an english page. If you email them in english they will answer for sure.

Felixc

 

[Warpspeed]

Have you tried consulting an exorcist ?

 

[14erclimber]

I'm embarrassed to note that it was two week ago when I asked if the well depth measurenmt problem was solved, and y'all answered right away that you'd be interested in what I was doing to solve a similar problem. Shucks -- got real busy here for awhile I guess ...

My solution is for a well that's not so deep (265 ft), and I haven't done it yet, but am about to make a first attempt at it, and will hopefully have it in sometime next week, if all goes well#### as planned.

I'm figuring on using a Freescale pressure sensor (MPXH6400A), which will measure up to 58 psi absolute. If I subtract about 11 psi atmospheric pressure (at 7200 ft), I get a useful range of measurement of 47 psi, or about 108 feet. My static depth has never been better than about 160 feet, and the pump is located at about 190 ft, with 70 un-used feet of hole below that (which I'd like to use). So if I put the sensor at or just below the pump, I'll be able to measure the entire range with this one sensor. One reason to choose this sensor, rather than a higher pressure one that I could put at the bottom, is that it comes in the really tiny package that I can fit inside a 1/2" copper pipe to use as a housing.

The reason my pump isn't nearer the bottom is because there's something wrong with the casing near the 190 ft level. I don't know if it's collapsed, offset, damaged, or what. The well was drilled in 1971, and I'm the second owner, with no way to find out what happened. Somewhat shoddy, low-bid job, I suspect. Anyhow, my goal with the sensors is to maximize production of the current well such that I don't have to dump 6 or 8 grand into drilling another hole. I may eventually need to, but by then, city water will likely be available. (It's getting close all the time. We used to be 15 miles out of town, and now it's only about 1/2 mile away.) We only now have occasional trouble since we've just put in a bit of lawn in the back, and have expanded the garden. We really only have trouble when the wife wants to do three loads of laundry on a Saturday morning, just after the lawn and garden have been watered (all on timers), and guests have arrived for the week. I guess it's an old enough well that you can't expect recovery to be great anymore. Maybe I need to investigate getting it flushed or washed out somehow to improve it. But I also know the water table is dropping a bit here, and this being a fairly shallow well anyhow, I might have to bite the bullet and replace it. When it does go almost dry, the extra turbulence busts loose a lot of sand and cloudy kind of crap, but it clears quickly if we let it alone for awhile. I've put a sediment filter on it -- which appears to be nothing compared to the level of filtering you've had to do.

So, you might ask, what does any of this have to do with your well? Nothing maybe, in that I seen you've already considered the sensors from Freescale. But I do have this to add -- I note that the absolute maximum pressure for these sensors is four times the rated pressure. If you look over what they tell you about the parts, you find that the output saturates or hits the supply rail, and of course won't put out anymore than full scale. That's understandable, but then why is the maximum pressure four times the max operating pressure? I asked them, via email, what happens when you exceed this pressure, and then bring it back to within range. They replied that the burst pressure is two to three times the max allowed pressure, so they've really left themselves a lot of margin, even at 4x operating prssure. Basically, it would start to work again when the pressure drops to within range, but there was some fine-print disclaimer wording that implied they won't guarantee that it will work if you run it too high. (I guess I should go look it up so I know *exactly* what it says.) I suppose they don't want to guarantee it, because then you could hold them to it, but as long as it doesn't bust the die or blow the case apart, I'd bet it would work great. One could test this on the surface easily enough -- hook the 150 psi sensor to a small tank and blow it up to 300 psi, and come back in a week and test it in normal range to see if it survived. The idea then, is to use two of these, one set where the pressure would be almost full scale at your highest expected static depth, and one below that. BTW, if you suspect the water coming in is somewhere near the 400 ft depth point, you could be cautious and make it easy on the sensor by setting it just below this point. That way, you can pump only a measured length of time beyond the point where the lower sensor goes dry, and know that you weren't going to run the pump dry. So anyhow, you'd have two sensors, one of which would be giving you good data. If you could locate them close enough together, they'd both put out valid values when the depth was right, thereby validating the other's reading.

The price is even right for these sensors, in that Freescale seems happy to send out samples of these. One minor problem, however, is that they're only good for measuring dry air. The solution is to use a short head tube filled with silicone oil, with trapped air above the oil. This stuff is pretty harmless, so you don't need to fret having a few drops in your well. Several ways to be sure it doesn't escape. I've got a sample of this stuff, which I'd be willing to share with anyone doing similar tinkering. My sample is pretty thin (50 centistokes viscosity), but with a fairly fine capillary tube it should work fine.

That's the idea, anyhow -- hope it helps. With my casing problem, eventually, I hope to get a very thin submsersible camera to chuck down my well to have a look around at what the trouble is at the 190 ft level. Then I'll have to figure out if I can get past it with a slim-line pump, wheter some kind of repair might be possible, or if I have to just re-drill the thing. I'd sure like to have more capacity at times. Anyone here know of a submersible camera as small as 1/2" diameter, including light source? Color preferred, of course. I might be able to use something a bit bigger, but I've got 5" casing and a pump that's just under 4", so am not sure I can count on slipping much more than 1/2" past the pump, particularly where the problem is. That reminds me: I meant to mention that I'm planning to use a long length of poly-pipe to send this thing down the well, so that there's little chance it could get hooked on something. I know I can get 1/2" poly in 250 ft rolls. Not sure how I'd join two of them to go 500 feet, however. Tricky at best. Looks like maybe you could use a camera too, for finding out what got stuck down there a hundred feet (or did you get that extracted already?).

Sorry this got verbose -- hope it doesn't choke when I try to submit it. I really didn't intend to double the length of this thread in one swell foop ...

S^2

 

[itsmoked]

14erclimber; very interesting.

Generally when you over pressure pressure transducers they experience a shift. Not good. Usually you have a full scale pressure. And a burst pressure. If you dally in the range between these two you run the LIKEY result of an offset shift. Hence your depth measurement may jump a few feet. Might this confuse the heck out of you?

Could you improve your capacity by adding another tank so your pump can run longer? Or does it just run dry? Sounds like the latter.

Can you get a driller to just run a drill down your existing hole to nock out the kink? Or could you make a sturdy 2x8 gantry and using a cheap car winch rapidly yank your pump. Then lower a very heavy slender weight on a piece of steel cable then run it past the kink. Next run it up and down to essentially saw the kink out?

Sounds like fun to me!

 

[VisiGoth]

Absolutely fascinating.
I learned from both the serious and the humorous.

Here is an extrapolation that may help.

Your real goal is to have more time hinting wild geese.

Then if you can catch more flies with honey, then maybe you can catch more geese with bottled water????

 

[alternety]

For those of you tracking this thread - FYI I just posted on the HVAC group to ask about the pumping. I am just getting nowhere and Grundfos has been very slow in responding to the noise problem. I got to get this fixed.

 

[itsmoked]

I finally finished installing my furnace. Yes!
Took about a 120HRs!! Gads.
The two stage heat is fantastic!

 

[fsmyth]

HRs? Hairy Restarts? Hopeful Run-ups?
I'd post pichurs too, if'n it took me that long.
Just KIDDING. Good job.
<als>

 

[alternety]

Really looks nice. Wish I had one.

 

[wagnerc]

Wow, that's an accomplishment. Just the kind of "damn the torpedoes" type on install I might try. Like how I'll spend 30 minutes writing a script so I won't have to type a 10 second command line.

 

[itsmoked]

Hahahah. A loser... Just like the rest of us!

Just spent two man-weeks of spare time studying which of two $400 printers to buy. (decided to postpone a purchase!!)
Sheesh.

Sorry to hear you're still having problems alternety. Have you tried running the pump short looped into a pail to see if it is noisy Then?

I still think it's the installation.. Not the pump.

 

[alternety]

No we have not tried a pail. For a short time we had a newer version of the pump where we could control the speed manually but before I played with it Grundfos took it back.

I am looking at a Taco 0012 pump as a possible replacement. It has a much shallower pump curve. Pressure does not shoot up at low flow. Ought to be easier to control.

I am going to see how much current the 0-10V input on the pump draws and see if I can make an external control from a battery and a pot. I just replaced the fuse in my meter (again) after trying to use it as a welder (again) in conjunction with my well pump DC supply.

I am spending most every day working on interior things to get to drywall/insulation. It is getting cold and it is really unpleasent working out there. I get cold easilly.

 

[itsmoked]

I was just going to recommend Taco. My buddy's Grunfos hot water circulator pump just choked and he was shocked at the replacement price so we looked around and found Taco. It was a third less money and quieter.

And yes I'm sure having walls will help with heating.

 

[VEBill]

"...having walls will help with heating."

WALLS: without question.
WELLS: rather dubious...

 

[alternety]

The contractor is big on Grundfos. He has used them for years and says he had reliability problems with Taco. But the curves look better and if what I read on their site is correct, the whole line is available in variable speed.

I have walls - they are just thin and full of holes (roof vents and temp doors. A couple of months ago while getting ready to install an exterior door I noticed the threshold was not what I had ordered. Two months go by. The vendor finally tells the lumber yard that they have not made those for a couple of years and don't have any. It appears no one wanted actual insulation in the them except in Montana. The ones discontiuued also actually appeared to keep water out of the wall. Not wanted either. Yet another oddity. The knob set pocket (where the latch goes into when the door is closed) has reinforcing metal to resist forced entry. The pocket for the deadbolt does not. Duuh.

I am not getting much activity on the HVAC post. I sure hope I get some good feedback from someone who does this.