LED Systems monitor retrofit
Tired of wondering if that needle on the old systems monitor is really
telling you something? Tired of walking into a pile of doodee in the bathroom floor
because the holding tank was full and you washed too many dishes? Rip that old
looser out of the wall and get one of these.
Its cheap ($75), easy to wire (use existing wiring) and it does away with those
@#$% original float senders that didn't work very well when they were new in the first
place. It will read using 4 colored LED lights 2 holding tanks, 1 fresh water tank,
the LP tank and battery voltage all with their own readout scale. It has a
momentary read rocker switch and a water pump switch which can be wired to make it a continuous read
switch for the monitor system if you already have a water pump switch. For you
Royale, Birchaven and other Transmode guys, this panel is good and bad. It will read
the gray and black tanks but the physical mounting will be a bit more challenge in that
the original monitor system is incorporated with the generator remote and other control
circuits, it can be done its just requires a bit more thought.
The first step is to build a mounting panel for the unit. It is @
1/3 the size of the original unit so you will need to build a panel to cover the hole and
mount the new unit in it.
I used 1/2" plywood. The hole is cut in the middle of the panel but
could easily be offset to make way for other switches or meters.
After the panel is cut and fir correctly, I laminated the panels. One gets a
gray panel, the other white.
The monitor brackets are screwed to the new panels and we're ready to wire them up.
There are 5 wires (original) to hook up. 12 volt hot and ground then one to the LP
tank, one to the fresh water tank and one to the holding tank. Not rocket science!
I connect the
yellow water pump output to the power feed from the momentary switch so for the 3 tanks to
install. The LP is easy, actually you are done it is hooked up the same as it was
originally. The holding and fresh water tanks get 4 3/8" hole drilled and
rubber well nuts inserted
.
The wires tied to the well nuts go to the divider network (little black cylinder at
the bottom of the pic. The divider network sends a different resistance to the panel
as water reaches the well nuts. The well nut are usually staggered fart it
will allow the panel to stay on or have a momentary visual, and this is done. Next
we have the sendersher apart than you see here but we were unable to get the drill in the
area of the tank to spread them out. Finally the divider network is tied to the
original sender wire which has been tied to the panel - now this part is done. Only
one thing left to do,
push the
test button and watch for smoke! Well, you should run water in the fresh tank and
watch the panel record that, then pump that water into the holding tank and see things go
up and down. See, that wasn't so bad now was it! As you can see, there is
plenty of room in the mounting panel for additional switches, meters and other important
stuff.
