Re: Water softeners

["Kevin" <kw1816@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Any use ? It's US based but the principle should be the same. http://www.cocoontech.com/portal/articles/tutorials/home-automation/41-how-to-measure-the-salt-level-in-your-water-softener

Kevin W.

--- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, Paul Gale <groups2@...> wrote:
>
> I guess you could use a probe but that might be far too complex.
>
> My softener has two chambers for the two blocks of salt and both are
partially submerged at the same time - so they go down at roughly the same
rate - so an optical sensor at a low point, looking across/through both
blocks would work for me - and the softener has dual chambers so one is
recharging while the other is in use - so no issues there for my situation.
>
> So it'd be a salt low type indication - maybe linked into the house
system and also a locally positioned LED or indication on a touch screen :)
>
> Paul.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Simon
Haslam
> Sent: 18 May 2011 13:14
> To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
> Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Water softeners
>
> Ah yes, that's on my list for when the round tuit arrives! For the
dual chamber metered softeners (like Kenetico/Crown/Harveys) it's a real
pain if you notice the water has gone hard again (we normally see it on
tea) since you need to regenerate both chambers (i.e. do one, wait
overnight for the water in the machine to get salty, do another).
>
> I was wondering if you could use a probe to measure the conductivity
of the water (i.e. saltiness) inside the bottom of the softener? Then maybe
below a certain threshold it could trigger a signal on a 1-wire sensor.
That said, maybe optical is closer to what others will have done already,
e.g. reading gas meters.
>
>
> Simon
>
> --- On Wed, 18/5/11, Paul Gale wrote:
>
> From: Paul Gale <groups2@...>
> Subject: RE: [ukha_d] Water softeners
> To: "ukha_d@xxxxxxx" <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
> Date: Wednesday, 18 May, 2011, 11:04
>
> Adding an HA relevance to this topic - I've found it a pain to
remember to add new salt blocks every few weeks. You can tell when it's run
out as the water feels so different in the shower etc. I was thinking of
adding a salt level sensor and feeding that into my HA system (probably
directly into HomeVision). Was thinking of an optical sensor across the
salt block area. Anyone done this with one of these types of softener?
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
>
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