Today a tanker arrived as arranged, and said that they had put 1000 liters of oil in my tank. With a delivery printout to prove it.
4 hours later the remote oil gauge is reporting that the tank is completely empty..yes, its getting signal - not a 'no signal' condition. But a 'tank empty condition'
I will be going out into the murk with a dipstick of course, but can anyone suggest WTF is happening, apart from the chilling prospect that the tanker simply didn't put in anything at all?
It is possible that the sender is not calibrated correctly, and the level is now higher than what it thinks is the maximum possible, causing the indication to 'flip over' to a default 'fault' reading. If you find the dipstick reads 'very full', then I would say wait until you have used some oil.
Stuck float?
No. Its a 2500 liter tank and was calibrated correctly and has worked perfectly for 9 months.
And I only put 1000 litres in. (allegedly)
No one holds stock in a falling market :-)
The key is in the use of the word 'sonic'
Use ultrasound as a depth gauge, not a float. measures time delay on reflection of short sharp pulse.
How much was in it before the 1000 litre fill?
Bugger all. Apart from a ten minute burn a day for hot water and a trickle into the aga there is little need for it so I let it run very low as the oil prices were falling fast.
Even the aga will go off if summer ever arrives.
DWP finally just decided to pay my winter fuel allowance...6 months too bloody late!
Assuming the tanker driver and the gauge are honest, and there are no leaks - pikeys.
Well right now the gauge is not being honest.
I've lodged a query with the (Oirish!!) manufacturers.
Unless he sucked it out instead of putting it in of course...
Brian
Valid point, except there wasn't enough in there beforehand to suck out
1000 litres, it seems.
well after a cold reboot, it seems to have discovered the oil.
Possible moving some of the metallic junk nearby has improved reception..
uk.d-i-y - 1 Watchman support - 0.
You mean he's pulled the hood of his oil skins over his head, retreated into his hut and put another shovel of coke into the brazier.
Good. There is something odd about the receiver when it gets into the flashing red LED low oil state it doesn't always recover gracefully.
Might also have been the cessation of heavy rain or tightening the nut on the sensor or ambient temperature rising bringing the battery voltage up. Who can tell as long as it is working. It was 12C max outside here yesterday - cold enough I was tempted to put the fire on!
I keep wondering how long the battery in the transmitter lasts - mine has been run for nearly 9 years it will genuinely run out sometime.
I read that it was supposed to be a ten-year battery, when I had mine installed last year. I would reckon on that, to be sure. Amazing that it can last that long, and still send out a radio signal.
I think the thing is that mostly it does sweet FA. It has some very low current timer that wakes up every two hours and fires an ultrasonic pulse at the oil, measures the delay and fires a coded RF burst back to the receiver,.. Then it goes back to sleep.
Possibly. But how would it recognise a rapid fall in oil level if it was in a sleep session? I also know that the 'alarm' noise made by the mains-powered receiving unit is not very loud at all, more of a frenzied clicking sound. It should have a dry contact for the addition of lights, bells, whistles etc.
but, while asleep it must consume some power, otherwise it doesn't know how long its been asleep.
That only needs the same power consumption that a clock battery in your PC uses, though, and that will last a long time. But yes, you are correct.
Although that is true these days the power during CPU sleep can be sub microamp and so the battery self discharge rate is often higher. It may also have wake on loud ambient noise a the tank trick to detect addition or subtraction of fuel.
I have a hunch that may ping the oil every ten/fifteen minutes but only transmits an rf pulse back to base if something changes or every couple of hours (to keep the base station happy).
Whatever it does the battery life at 10y outdoors is phenomenal.
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