Adding water - Auto Shut Off

[ronwell]

I want to automate adding water (most important pool chemical) to some degree.

Right now, I know how many gallons it takes to add an inch and I know how to measure flow rate using a bucket and a stopwatch and then determine when to go turn the hose off.

What I'd love is to attach a device to the hose to shut the water off when I've add N gallons.

Can anyone recommend a purchase for this purpose?

 

[jmastron]

I'm planning to do something similar -- my fill pipe is hard-plumbed to the water supply with an inconveniently-placed valve and I totally get the "I need 20 minutes of water, what if I forget to come back out?" issue. I'm going to cut that line to have a hose bibb on the supply side, and a hose connector on the fill pipe side. Then I'll use a fairly standard hose faucet timer. Just picking a couple that are in stock at my local Home Depot:

Orbit Mechanical Water Timer-56908 - The Home Depot

This is just a simple twist to the time you want and walk away. Or a bit more capability in this:

Orbit 1-Port Single Dial Timer-62056 - The Home Depot

You can start it by hand by pressing the "manual" button and select a number of minutes (1-240) and it will shut off after that. Or you can have a daily/etc fill for N minutes. Personally for $15 more I'm inclined to get one like this that gives me more options. Let me know what you end up because it may be a while before I find the torch to do mine...

Edited to add: For the same price, I like this electronic one better:
Orbit 1-Outlet Hose Faucet Timer-56619 - The Home Depot

Has the same manual/minutes option, but also has a "rain delay" button so if you set it to add daily, it's easy to see the level is a bit high and tell it to skip N days.

 

[pooldv]

Hose timers are the bomb.com for many uses. Water troughs, sprinklers, filling pools, etc

 

[Steve #1]

Use a sprinkler valve and an electronic timer if you want something more automated.

 

[Steve #1]

Use a sprinkler valve and an electronic timer if you want something more automated.

About an hour after I made the above post I got home to find a very full pool. The day before, I had water going in to the pool with a hose and a mechanical timer much like the one linked to above. Not having full faith in the timer I asked my son to turn off the hose in about an hour. His 13 yo mind heard me tell him to tun off the pool pump which he did do, but the timer ran for hours with the dial stuck on 45 min.

Moral of the story, never trust your water bill to a bad timer and even if a 13 yo reports back that they did what you had asked of them dosn't mean they were paying attention to what you had asked them to do. He's a good kid, your average 13 yo probably wouldn't have even turned off the wrong thing.

 

[jmastron]

So all this talk inspired me to ignore my other chores and cut in a hose bibb/fitting to my pool fill line, you know, just to demonstrate the answer to OP's question



Here's the timer I got:



I got the 2-zone version because I'm thinking of running another hose to fill the fountain nearby periodically; was $39 vs the $29 for single zone. It seems pretty well made, so I'm hopeful it will be reliable.

You will want to re-measure the flow rate; it is noticeably lower than the hard-piped setup I had. I measure 7.5 gallons per minute now. Not an issue at all since I don't have to babysit the fill anymore, but good to note when setting the timer.

 

[dannieboiz]

These are some awesome ideas!!! Got me thinking to use a Rachio or similar WiFi irrigation controls and just run one of the zone channel to the a line for the pool using the 24v valve.

 

[stebs]

you may want to consider using something like this as the ultimate fill control with the hose timer to be a backup in case the autofill valve sticks open...

M-3000 Pool Sentry Automatic Water Leveler - PoolSupplies.com

 

[crusemm]

About an hour after I made the above post I got home to find a very full pool. The day before, I had water going in to the pool with a hose and a mechanical timer much like the one linked to above. Not having full faith in the timer I asked my son to turn off the hose in about an hour. His 13 yo mind heard me tell him to tun off the pool pump which he did do, but the timer ran for hours with the dial stuck on 45 min.

Moral of the story, never trust your water bill to a bad timer and even if a 13 yo reports back that they did what you had asked of them dosn't mean they were paying attention to what you had asked them to do. He's a good kid, your average 13 yo probably wouldn't have even turned off the wrong thing.

I had almost the exact same thing happen to me, only I didn't have the timer installed yet. Told son turn off water, he turned off pump, noticed it at 10pm. Luckily water is cheap where we are, so not to bad. I have a timer installed on mine, similar to the one jmastron linked too. The only issue I have is my hose bib is an anti-siphon type. The bib leaks from the backflow preventer when it has pressure applied to the closed solenoid valve in the timer. Not sure how to correct that, short of replacing the hose bib.

 

[stebs]

hose bib shouldn't leak in that situation.. It's probably going to need replaced, but you might check with a plumber to see if it's repairable.

 

[jmastron]

I had almost the exact same thing happen to me, only I didn't have the timer installed yet. Told son turn off water, he turned off pump, noticed it at 10pm. Luckily water is cheap where we are, so not to bad. I have a timer installed on mine, similar to the one jmastron linked too. The only issue I have is my hose bib is an anti-siphon type. The bib leaks from the backflow preventer when it has pressure applied to the closed solenoid valve in the timer. Not sure how to correct that, short of replacing the hose bib.

Everyone says they're not supposed to leak when they relieve the pressure, but they always seem to after a while, depending on how the water shuts off. Is the vacuum breaker a separate little cylinder on the end of the hose bibb? It might be possible to just replace that part (there may be a set screw that was intentionally broken off holding it on though). If the hose bibb is threaded onto the pipe it might be easy to replace; if soldered on a little less so.

 

[crusemm]

It's a through-wall (freeze-proof) design. Threads onto the pipe, but inside the wall. Pain in the rear to replace. The anti-siphon comes apart, but not off of the bib. My solution for now has been to move the timer to a faucet without the anti-siphon, and run a hose to where it connects into the pool supply. At some point, I would like to really plumb it into a water supply line, but this will work for now.

 

[lovemyazpool]

I built my own automatic water adding system using a resistive water level sensor, some arduino mircocontrollers, a Raspberry Pi and python. It also measures and monitors water temperature, pH and ORP (via Atlas probes).

Basically I have a sensor that monitors the water level once per minute. When the pool level gets to the "low" point that I select, I open a sprinkler valve that is plumbed into my pool piping. It will stay on until the water level sensor indicates that the pool has been filled to the level I have preset. The system has a manual fill mode, an adjustable time based safety to prevent overfilling, direct communication to my Rachio sprinkler system so that I do not attempt to fill the pool while my sprinklers are running (doing so would render my sprinkler inop as I do not have the necessary water pressure to fill the pool and run the sprinklers at the same time) and it looks at my pool pump power consumption to prevent filling while my pump is running.

I have a smart meter on the line that shows me how much water is used each time the pool is filled. All of this is graphed and recorded to a MySQL database.

I think I have about $300 in all of the parts (couple of microcontrollers, Raspberry Pi, Sprinkler Valve, pH and ORP components).

If anyone is interested, all of the code and some pictures are available on Github:

GitHub - rjsears/Pool_Fill_Control: Raspberry Pi / Arduino / Python Project to automate filling of swimming pool.

 

[Steve #1]

Looks like a nice setup Love, I'll have to take a closer look at it. I'll been tossing around a few ways to automate the pool including fill and may borrow some of your ideas. At this point I'm leaning in the direction of a Vera/Mysensors type setup.

 

[lovemyazpool]

Looks like a nice setup Love, I'll have to take a closer look at it. I'll been tossing around a few ways to automate the pool including fill and may borrow some of your ideas. At this point I'm leaning in the direction of a Vera/Mysensors type setup.

Steve -

Let me know if I can answer any questions. I am open to additional suggestions as well!!

 

[lovemyazpool]

I finally finished my pool automation project (well..is anything ever 'really' finished?). I thought I would share some pictures here of the final product. In the end, I am able to monitor and automatically fill my pool, monitor when my pump is running and how many watts it is consuming, monitor my filter PSI, monitor pH and ORP, monitor water temperature as well as internal box temperature (fans come on at an internal temp of 90F), monitor my sprinklers (i fill the pool using a valve on my sprinkler lines) and manually fill and manually bypass (ie vacation mode) the filling if I want. Additionally I monitor my smart water meter on the line for the pool so I can track gallons used just for the pool. I also have an RS485 interface to my intelliflow pump. I just need to mount it and add some nice placards and I can move on to building a full web interface for it next!

The system has a battery backup for the Raspberry Pi with automatic shutdown and a complete notification system via the free pushbullet platform.

All tracking and monitoring is done via a custom python script and emoncms.

 

[camueller]

Looks awesome. I hope to get a similar project going over the winter. I may be begging for code at that point. I don't have an autofill or landscape lighting at the moment, and only a single speed pump. No solar yet, though I hope to add soon. In other words, my setup may be a lot simpler. But time will tell.

 

[dradam]

Auto fill sentry as above for over the edge filling, or "pool mizer" Pool Water Leveler By PoolMiser for a system built into your pool and pool deck. Both shut off automatically like a toilet float. Seem a lot simpler than a timer system to me. I have had a pool miser for 11 years and it has never overflowed.

 

[PMellin]

Wow. I mean REALLY WOW, like REALLY REALLY WOW! This has got to be one of the most awesome DIYs I've seen in a very long time. After 2 years of use how is it working? Need to make any major mods?

 

[lovemyazpool]

Just a quick update on my project. I have continued to expand my pool automation system and have added acid level detection and alerting, the ability to turn on and off alerts via email, pushbullet, logging, debugging and SMS, and added solar monitoring of my system so I can make intelligent decisions about when to run my pump or not run it depending on time-of-day as well as solar output. Finally, I got around to working on a web interface. It is very simple for now but allows me to start and stop filling the pool manually, stop an automatic fill that is in progress, turn on and off logging, debugging and notifications, turn on and off the software that controls my pump, see if my sprinklers are running, see overall system status and monitor total water usage as well as electrical consumption for the house and solar plant.

I plan to continue to work on the code and keep adding functionality like controlling lights. The code is all open source and available on Github.

Here is a preview of my web interface: