Water Harvesting Level Sensor

[thescullster]

Hi all

A colleague of mine is trying to troubleshoot a problem with a water reclamation system at his GF's.

He is thinking that the level sensor might be shot in the water tank and therefore the control board never gets a full signal or runs the delivery pump.

The cable connecting the control board to the sensor is a four core with colours red, blue, green and yellow.

Has anyone any experience of these systems to know what job each core is doing? He is thinking that one pair is power and the other a 4-20mA signal. Does that sound likely? If so, would it be red/blue for power and green/yellow for signal?

We have appropriated a fluke tester to try to diagnose the problem which can simulate the 4-20 from the sensor.

Any pointers gratefully received.

Thanks

Phil

[newshound]

Any information about the manufacturers might help (unless it is a complete home brew).

[Steve Walker]

Quite possible. But also possible that one pair is 4-20mA and the other is an alarm contact - most, but not all, field instruments run off the

4-20mA signal that they are controlling, with no separate power supply.

They seem likely colours, but who knows what the installer might have done.

That makes life a lot easier.

Information on the make and model would be good.

SteveW

[thescullster]

Hi Steve/Newshound

My colleague is back in the office, so I can provide a little more detail.

The installer company was "Kingspan" although this is probably irrelevant as, according to the GF they did not appear to have much of a clue. The hardware carries the name of Envireau and the system was sold as a rain water recovery solution.

Apparently there are four wires as described previously between the sensor in the tank and the control panel and there are four similar wires from the panel to an analogue needle-type display showing the tank fill condition between empty and full.

Before the system "broke", the level gauge simply fanned backwards and forwards, so clearly the installation was never completed correctly - it appears to go back to 2007. My colleague has replaced the pump, believing that to be the failed component, but the system still will not run (even in its previous lack-lustre manner).

Any further thoughts appreciated.

Phil

[alan_m]

Possibly a more modern installation

but mentioned:

Differential sensor has a 4 core cable:- red (5V) ?connected to pin 1- green (GND) ?connected to pin 2- yellow (+Out) ?connected to pin 3- blue (-Out) ?connected to pin4.

[thescullster]

Thanks Alan have forwarded to my colleague for investigation

Phil