Apollo oil tank sensor

Not much help, I'm afraid, but mine has worked flawlessly ever since I bought it about 12-13 years ago. It needed a new battery, after approx.

Not meaning to be flippant, but why not use a dip stick? I have some sort of sensor but it's unreliable so made a dip stick with a length of bamboo set into a short piece of wood to make a "T". The bamboo is marked every 100mm and I record the level weekly(ish) in a spreadsheet, together with deliveries and oil price. The spreadsheet calculates volume/day, cost/day and cost/year, as well as producing a useful graph. Simples!

As I mentioned, my Apollo has been flawlessly reliable, and reading the tank level does not require me to go outdoors and fight my way through the foliage to read it. Its accuracy is plenty good enough. My trips to the tank are limited to unlocking and relocking it for fill-ups, and 10-year trips to fit a new battery.

My spreadsheet tells me the average litres/day between fill-ups, which is as much information as I want to derive from the readings. I can calculate to sufficient accuracy how much room there is left in the tank when fill-up time comes along, and suppliers do not mind a little over-estimating of capacity, as long as it is within reason. Simples!

Since the only control I have of the cost of oil is to choose the cheapest supplier at fill-up time (I run the local Oil Syndicate), I have no need to calculate cost/day or cost/year

Feel free to use your dipstick, but I will stay with my Apollo, thanks! Although I am a Luddite when it comes to unnecessary digitisation of my life, this is one technology that seems to work just fine. I used a dipstick when originally calibrating the Apollo's readings vs. litres in the tank, but since then, it has been 'repurposed'.

Indeed. And now the receiver is claiming to be hearing nothing from the transmitter, so I've just ordered a new unit (i.e., both ends).

I think that is the best decision.

I have no experience of your particular sensor, but have worked with a lot of other makes.

You say it went faulty after a fill.

Could the tank have been filled higher than the norm at all, because the problem you describe was common in the Siemens industrial units if a tank was overfilled or the programming not quite right.

You see there is a blanking distance of approx 0.3 m in most sensors and if the liquid enters this space it can confuse the algorithm used to determine a particular tanks capacity. With the Siemens there would be erroneous readings until the tank was empty or the system was reset.

Failing that I have had spiders setting up home on the head.

A foolproof test to ensure that internal reflections are not a problem is to simply remove the measuring head and point it at a wall or flat board. A set of steps is advisable as the time constants to indicate results can be long. It should be easy to position the head at the appropriate distance to simulate the height you would expect any particular liquid level to give.

This information may be useless to you, but it does have the advantage of giving an idea of how to approach the problem instead of looking at the final display for inspiration :-)

Mine (Oil watchman) did that and I took it apart and poured all the water out of it - no idea how that got in - put it in the airing cupboard to dry out and it's mostly OK now. Trouble is its at the end of its range and reception is therefore iffy...

We have a Watchman. It's useless. Our tank is inside a room attached to the workshop (where the sun can't rot it, and the thieves can't easily access it). The watchman doesn't seem able to transmit through the fireproof board. And even if it does it only measures in tenths of a tank.

The old tank had a clear plastic tube connected by a tap that you had to pull to make oil flow. It was simple, reliable and accurate. Apparently you can't get them any more.

I use a dipstick. Which is a PITA.

I must gert round to finishing my own ultrasonic gauge based on a Pi PICO W which will send its data to my central heating website...via wifi.

I am not sure if the wifi will get through., Hmm that was postoned till a sunny day the days are sunny.

Thomas Prufer

Hmm. Interesting. Our boiler service guy wasn't interested in doing one.

Andy