Saturday, August 29, 2009

Water meter update

It works! We now know - to the gallon - how much water we have in our tanks.
Water meter prepped for install.


This is the midships H2O engineering compartment. AKA under the table. We have a watermaker but haven't yet needed to use it.
The water meter is installed on the pressure side of the water pump. I put it between the water pump and the accumulator.
The small dial on the right side of the meter indicates hundredths of a gallon. The wire is connected to the LCD display.
You can mount the LCD readout anywhere you want. I figured the galley was as good a place as any and wouldn't require any crazy cable fishing. A previous owner had moved the propane system to the deck box on the bow and put in a new solenoid switch in the head. The solenoid switch that was still in the galley was disconnected. I am going to have a labeled placard made for the water meter LCD readout to replace this, but until then I just cut a hole in the aluminum solenoid plate with a Dremel and mounted it there.
Installed and ready. It's hard to make out in the picture, but just below the readout display is a gray button that resets the counter to zero. The LCD unit is powered by a lithium battery that the manufacturer claims will last 5-10 years.
I topped off with water and then waited to see what the meter would read when each tank ran dry from normal use. I did this several times and the meter provided consistent readings of 112 gallons.
Forward tank = 53 gallons
Aft tank = 59 gallons

So whenever we fill up with water I hit the button to zero out the meter and we always know how much water we've used from our tanks.
The watermaker would of course mess this reading up if we didn't run it long enough to top off the tanks, but thus far we haven't been able to take a long enough trip to need it.

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