aviatordave

I like the overflow reservoir system. Sounds very handy. We live in a heavily wooded area and my biggest problem for the pond is oak leaves and acorns. They get sucked into the pump box that sends water back up to the upper basin regardless of the system of screens, nets and brush filters that should keep them out. Not a big deal in the summer but fall brings on these headaches. We just put up the mesh tarps over the whole system to keep the leaves out of the pond. We’ll have to remove the tarps after all the leaves have fallen and hopefully before the snow flies. The tarps won’t support the snow loads. (Some years we’ve gotten a heavy snow before all the leaves have fallen. That’s always a big headache.) The problem that all the fall debris poses is that occasionally something works it’s way to the back corner of the pump box where I have the float switches and prevents the “system full” float from traveling up enough to send the off command to the water fill valve. Fortunately, I have the ISY set up to text me when the system starts to fill and when it’s full. I can tell, just from the frequency of texts, if the pump box needs cleaning. If, for some reason, I get distracted and don’t clean it soon enough, (and I’ve only experienced this once so far,) I can get a “Pond fill Started” message and then no “Pond Full” message. (Which should appear roughly 11-12 minutes later.) Then I know the system is stuck in the on position because some piece of a leaf, twig or acorn has jammed the upper float. I can also know this by looking out the window and seeing the stream of water flowing out of the pump box overflow port and downhill into the woods. I’m trying to think of a way to isolate the valves from the debris in the water that gets past the filters. A simple piece of screen might do the trick but it’s a tight area. Another thought I had was having the float switches in their own enclosure that is plumbed into the pump box. That way they would share a common water level but the float switches would exist outside the debris collection/pump area. But even the port that allowed water to the float switch enclosure could become clogged. The simplest solution is that I just clean out the pump box on a regular schedule. :-/ All in all, I’m immensely pleased with the system. It does have it’s vulnerabilities though. Hopefully you can benefit from some of my experiences. (Or even better, you won’t need to worry about them.) -Dave Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi George, It gives me great pleasure to be inspirational for someone. My friends who don’t have the level of interest that I have in smart automation usually just smile and nod, hand out some compliments, and move on. I looked at some of the horizontally mounted level float switches like yours when I was setting up my system but wound up using the ones I posted pictures of. On the switch you use, can you tell me if the on/off trigger occurs at a single point or does the float have to travel to it’s limits to change the switch status? (I.e., Does the float have to travel all the way down to open (or close?) and then all the way up revert back to closed? (Or open?). I found with the switches I use, while the float has hard travel limits, the way the magnetic reed switch inside the tube works is that it opens and closes as soon as the magnet in the float influences it. The result is that the switch opens and closes at a specific point of travel with the magnet and not with the full range of travel of the float. (Which is about 1/4”) The problem it made for me was that the system triggered the water on and off about every 10 minutes. Granted, the water level in the pond stayed EXACTLY at one height, but the frequency of cycling was going to wear out my solenoid valve fast. I had to go with a second float and I/O Linc to define the lower water limit so I could produce a physical water level range of about an inch. Now my system cycles about once every couple of days. To make this work I had to set up a simple program in the ISY. I would have preferred to not use a program but wasn’t willing to let the solenoid valve cycle so often. How does your system work? Do you have a range of water level it waits before starting to fill and shut off? -Dave Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hey keepersg, Great looking setup!! I like how much more clean and elegant your setup is with the din rail components! Well done! Is completely autonomous from your ISY? (Or at least can it be? ) What do you use to start and stop flow? -Dave Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Is that where a bunch of us sit in a circle saying “My wife just doesn’t understand why I can’t leave well enough alone.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh, don’t underestimate the psychosis of the rabid home automationer . . . If you all go back up to the pictures and look closely at the 4th pic, (the one that shows the insides of the box) you’ll notice that under the box where the garden hose connects to the outlet side (lower left) of the box is an Orbit gallon monitor. I know exactly how many gallons have been put through the system as well as how many gallons went through during the last individual cycle! The DATA IS ALL MIIIINE!!!!! MUUAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You guys are too funny. ; -) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

larryllix, I had to chuckle when you mentioned hysteresis. I haven’t had to work with that term since my previous life in the aerospace industry. ; -) That said, I understand what you were getting at. What I’m hearing from you though, is that what I’m trying to accomplish with the current physical float setup is probably not possible with just using scenes. As robust as Insteon devices are, I don’t believe that the IOLinc can ignore one of the two states of a switch, open/closed, through a normal Insteon linc, which is what a scene essentially creates. It just saves you from running back and forth between devices performing tap adds, ad-nauseam. I agree with and have already contemplated a sump pump style switch. I might have to fabricate something to fit the bill though. If you go back to the pictures I uploaded, the second pic shows the space constraints that I have to work with for float placement. It’s pretty tight. Locating the switch elsewhere is not an option. Thank you for taking an interest and engaging. I love being able to come to the forums for brainstorming! Even if it’s only to confirm suspicions. ; -) -Dave Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi Larryllix, I tried the solution you suggested, one scene with the IOLinc connected to the lower float switch as a controller and the pond water valve ON as a responder. A second scene with the IOLinc connected to the upper float as a controller and the pond water valve OFF as a responder. It’s not working. Each individual float will turn the pond water valve on if a float reaches the down position and off when it reaches the up position. I can’t seem to find a way for the IOLincs to ignore one position of their respective floats. Could it be in my physical setup? Each float switch has two wires. It’s a simple completion of a circuit; Open or closed. I have one wire connected to the IOLinc ground terminal (GND) and the other to the sense (S) terminal. One float switch per IOLinc, both set up as described. I can’t seem to click on anything in the scene setup that allows me to customize the conditions to be more specific than controller, responder, on, & off. I’m looking for something like ‘ON only’ or ‘Off only’ but it doesn’t seem to be an option in the ISY. Any advice? -Dave Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi keepersg, Your pond setup sounds pretty nice! Drprm1 hit the nail on the head. Amazon is a great source for those kinds of float switches. Just search “Stainless float switch”. They have them with 90 degree bends, short stems, long ones, etc. Be aware though, even though the float will have a travel of 1/8” to maybe 1/4”, the actual trigger point is somewhere in the middle, and it takes almost no movement of the float to toggle the switch on and off. Don’t think that the float will travel to it’s limits to make the state changes. They also make double float switches. Two floats on one stem. Two switches. Set distances. You can’t adjust the range. (That’s why I went with two separate units. I can adjust the range.) Other than those things you should be aware of, the switches work great. Oh, one last thing: The L bracket you see on the picture of the float switch I posted does NOT come with it. I made that myself out of a small piece of metal. I cut a slot on the vertical part of the L so that I wouldn’t have to be so precise in the placement of the hole I drilled to mount it. Get the hole you drill within about a half inch or so of where you want it and make the slot in the bracket about 2ish inches long. That will give you plenty of play in getting the float height right without having to go through crazy gymnastics with a tape measure to drill in the exact spot. Ok. I’ll get off my soap box. ; -) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Larryllix, Thank you for the info. I’ll give that a shot and let ya know how it turns out. -Dave Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Tazman, I’ve already stopped the problem of too frequent of cycling with the addition of the second float. The system only runs once every couple of days now. It’s great. Lilyoyo1, simplextech, I couldn’t agree more. That’s one reason I posted this question. (Which, I’ll admit, is hard to keep track of since I have a small novel’s worth of rambling to explain why I’m asking.) Do you know of a way to set up a scene so that two IO Lincs can control one outlet in the manner that I describe in the OP? I want certain states of the float switches to trigger the outlet that controls the water valve, and other states to be ignored. To simplify, I want one IO Linc to only turn on the outlet (open the water valve) and the other IO Linc to only turn off the outlet. Lower float switch closed, upper float switch open. I want both IO Lincs to ignore the float switches when the lower one is open and the upper one is closed. So far, what actually happened with scenes was that each IO Linc controlled the outlet when either float switch changed states, regardless of open/close status. Which means the water level around one float basically takes control and ignores the second float, which puts me back at cycling too much. I solved this with programs but wondered if it is possible with scenes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi tazman, I used to have a simple garden hose timer turning on a couple times a day for X minutes. I could never seem to dial in the exact times needed. What I’ve learned about water features is that they lose water at different rates based on temperature and humidity. Also, if it rains a lot, then there’s the problem of having the pond overfill and now I’m needlessly dumping water over edges into the area around the pond. That, and most importantly, I like to tinker so I can’t just leave well enough alone. ; -) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Whitehambone, we most definitely live in a 4 season environment. I will have to winterize the setup. I’ll use some compressed air to blow the lines clean. I’m debating whether I should unplug the IO Lincs and bring them inside. I can’t think of an immediate reason that they would be harmed by the cold since they’re in a weatherproof enclosure and wouldn’t see any contact with snow . . . The power would be off. But I don’t know if there are any components to the circuitry inside them that might not like being frozen. (Capacitors?) I might be more concerned with ice damaging the float switches . . . This exercise in thought is making me wonder about the extent of winterization this system will need. Thank you for bringing up this point! I suspected that Scenes weren’t that robust, but larryllix, you make a good point about potential obscurity. It’s is much easier to see what’s going on with program statements. Scenes just seem to be a bunch of statements of responder/controller relationships. And even those can be confusing sometimes. I agree that several years removed, it might be difficult to interpret. I don’t need the water level in the pond to be that precise. If I need to adjust it, I’ll do it with changes to the levels of the two float switches. I made the brackets for them, specifically to allow for sliding up and down to refine positions after installation. I was just curious about whether or not Scenes could could be manipulated and to what degree. I sure love the creativity allowed by IO Lincs! Thanks for the feedback, folks! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here’s some pics of the setup if anybody is curious: Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi folks, I haven’t been on in a while because everything has been running smoothly! Love that! Just recently, however, I tackled a new project that I’m pretty happy with. It’s a pond filling system. We have, what you’d call a water feature, behind our house. It’s composed of an upper and lower basin, connected by a little creek that allows the upper basin to flow down into the lower. The upper basin isn’t that large but the lower basin is probably about 1000 gallons of water. There are a couple of water falls and a pump box in the system to keep the water moving. Because of splash from the waterfalls and evaporation in general, the system loses water over time. The Insteon system I set up has two stainless float switches that control a high and low water point. Each of those switches are wired to an Insteon I/O Linc. There is also an Insteon outdoor outlet in the system that when on, opens a solenoid valve to allow a garden hose to start filling the pond. All the Insteon stuff is housed in a weather tight project box. The I/O Lincs turn the outdoor outlet on and off. Because the float switches each have an open and closed state, I have to make sure the solenoid valve only opens when the lower float switch is closed and shuts off when the upper float switch is open. (Both float switch states are closed with the float in the lower position and open in the upper position.) Initially, with this configuration, I tried setting up a scene where the IO Lincs both controlled the outlet. That didn’t work because when either switch state was reached it would affect the outlet switch. In other words, when the water got low enough to let the lower float switch close and turn on the outlet, it also turned off the outlet when the lower float rose with the water level and opened the switch, well before the water got to the desired upper float level. Easy fix. Just write a couple of short programs instead of using a scene. If lower float IO linc is On (float switch closed) them turn on the outlet/water. Second program, IF upper float IO Linc is off (float switch open), then turn outlet/water off. Both programs send me a text message alerting me to the change in states. Works great. So finally, my question: I noticed when using a scene and physically manipulating the float switches to test it, the system responded practically immediately. When using the programs, there is a noticeable delay of about 1-2 seconds before the system reacted to the float switch changes. Is it possible, WITH A SCENE, to have two IO Lincs control one outlet but only with a single state change from the float switches? By this, I mean can the lower float IO Linc have the water turn on when the lower float switch is in the closed position but IGNORE the lower float switch when the water rises a little and shifts the float to the upper, open position and continue to fill the pond until the upper float switch is pushed to the upper/open position, turning the valve outlet/water flow, off? With the reverse being true as well, can the upper float switch IO Linc ignore when the upper float drops to it’s lower closed position and not turn the water on until the water drops enough to allow the lower float switch to handle the turn on the water state? This is obviously child’s play for a program to accomplish, but I didn’t see anywhere in the ISY system that allowed for that kind of detailed control in a scene. (Probably why programs are needed. The only reason I ask is because I noticed how much faster things happened with scenes vs programs. I don’t need my pond watering system to react that fast but I can think of other situations where near instantaneous reactions would be desirable. I look forward to your thoughts on the matter! -Dave P.S. For those of you asking why bother having two float switches when one would do the job? I tried this originally. The float switch is just a vertical, linear setup with a reed switch inside a stem that the float with a magnet rides up and down on. Even though the float switch has about 1/4” of travel between it’s upper and lower stops along the stem, there’s a specific point where only a hair’s width of travel one way will open or close the reed switch. It took so little movement to change open/closed states with the reed switch that the system changed states about 433 times in a 24 hour period. It would cycle on and the hose would only dump water into the pond for about 10 seconds before the float switch would open, shutting the water off. Couple minutes later, it would repeat. This had the desirable effect of keeping the pond water level amazingly consistent, but cycled the solenoid valve WAY too much. The manufacturer rates the solenoid valve for 200,000 cycles. At the rate it was cycling, the valve life would be about 1.5 years. I’m currently letting the water level in the pond drop about an inch between filling cycles. Now the valve only cycles about once every two days. Muuuuch better valve life!! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk