water tank gauge....

The landlord of the house we live in here in Mexico City had some upgrades done to the water system over the past few days. Houses here use a cistern in the ground and water storage tanks on the roof and they were installing some automatic pumps that would trigger as the water dropped below a certain level in the tank and pump water from the cistern up to the tanks. Until now we had to do that manually - either by guessing when the tanks were low or by being in the shower and running out of water! :)

The thing I was interested in was the device they installed that determined water level. I expected to see some sort of float device or whatever but all it was was 4 lengths of insulated wire - maybe 14Ga - , each with a small - maybe 3/8" square piece of metal on the end. The wires were cut so one was about 4" inch off the bottom and the rest were equally spaced up to the full level. The controller on the other end energizes the pumps based on the level of water in reference to those four "electrodes." There is no gauge associated with it.

I was impressed with how easy it is to set this up and and maintain. THere is no custom cutting or fitting of a tank sensor. You just set the wiring however you want it. Anybody seen something like this with a gauge rather than a pump trigger? I guess it could only tell you several specific levels - 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 - but I can't imagine needing anything more than that.

Our oem water tank gauge (with the remote gauge) never worked - it always randomly stuck. I replaced it with a brand new oem gauge and it randomly sticks as well. THis 4 wire thing seems really slick and simple with no issues with floats that don't slide or other weirdnesses that tank gauges seem to have.

Snake River uses a similar system. They put those sensors on the outside of a plastic tank or make up a probe out of pvc with the sensors inside of it.

I tried it an it didn't last long. I ended up with what I believe to be the "tried and true" tank gauge that just plain works. And that is the Hart Tank Tender. We had one on a previous boat and it never failed us in 10 years of use. This one has been just as good. I have both fuel tanks, both holding tanks, and one water tank hooked up to the Hart. It's very accurate.