Watchman oil tank monitor query

Aug 19, 2024 Last reply: 1 year ago 5 Replies

We have a Watchman monitor on our oil tank which has worked well for nearly twenty years now.



Recently, it has been behaving oddly in that the house receiver seems to lose contact with the tank sender, but only from around lunchtime to late afternoon. Early evening, the indoor display suddenly works again, and continues until lunch the following day.



This has been happening for a couple of months, but not on damp, dismal days like today, when the connection is not lost. It cannot be a coincidence that the sun, when shining, is aiming vaguely at the tank from mid day to late afternoon.



However, if it were a low battery at the tank end problem, I would expect the sender to be more powerful, not less, when in the sun, the heat exciting the AA batteries.



There is ivy to one side of the tank, but I cut that back at least twice a year to keep the tank filler and Watchman completely clear.



Any bright ideas?


I would still replace the battery to eliminate that as a possibility. When was it last replaced? Always start with the simple things.

Could be the battery contacts that need adjusting mid-day heat might just be causing them to bend away and why they return back to normal in the cooler temperatures.

Perhaps there is an interfering signal from somewhere which is being generated from lunchtime to late afternoon. It might be on the limit of interfering as fog can can reduce signal strength. Do you have any other radio devices using 433MHz (such as an external wireless thermometer connecting to an in-house display) which occasionally give problems at the same time?

Interesting thought. Yes, there is a weather station mounted on a post about six feet from the oil tank, although I have not noticed any problems with the indoor display of the weather station either at the same time as the tank monitor, or at any other time.

I think the easy and obvious answer is to try changing the batteries in the tank sender first. A pair of AAs from memory. Ensure the battery contacts are clean and well adjusted at the same time.

When the batteries are low on the sensor of our garage roller-door it triggers our Watchman's alarm.

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