July 2020 onwards - River System Status

[PatrickW]

I must admit it does seem like there is a lot of water loss, but I feel obliged to defer to whoever has had greater experience of the physical system. My perception is that it was not this bad before.

My initial suspicion was that it had to do with the sensor fault in the sump. Another theory is that the circulation pump runs fast, draining the sump instantly (causing the software to top it up from the butts and switch off the circulation pump). Then, some moments later, the water comes back to the sump via the river and, before the software can switch the pumps back on, it overwhelms the sump, causing major water loss into the soakaway. Repeat until no water remains in the butts. That would match the rapid drain/fill behaviour I observed in the sump in the winter.

Did we change anything about the way the circulation pump works some time around about last autumn? E.g. go from manual to auto control, or change the speed?

Just some ideas. May not solve anything. May be looking at the wrong things. May just be a massive leak.

[Penri]

The water loss is greater than I would like, much greater. Also the lack of rainfall has not given us any buffer stock.

There are leaks from the river bed and elsewhere, the problem is finding them and dealing with them effectively. I have drained and applied a mortar sealant to 5 of the river sections over the past two winters but we still have an issue.

I was getting to the view that perhaps the problem was related to the feed from the sump to the bog garden but when I examined the joint I'd put in 5 years ago i found its surrounding bone dry (no leaks). It could be the pipework itself, but MDPE buried under the longs flowerbed and part of the lawn bordering the bog garden.

Unfortunately despite the dry weather and the amount of water being lost there's no obvious signs of wet, or even damp, patches near the river bed or it's associated pipe work.

I'll keep working at it!

[Penri]

Partick, apologies I didn't address your commnets.

I have not seen the river system logs but my perception is that the control system is doing what is should be doing. The circulation pump is set to 1, when I looked last and all the measurement floats were "floating", ie not stuck.

I would be grateful if you could check the logs to see if there any evidence of anything untoward going on with the control system but I don't think the problem lies there.

I was planning to take a stroll in tomorrow (Sunday) so see how things are "on the ground".

[hamishmb]

Hi all,

Back again

So, my understanding is that the river system generally copes well with the sump empty/rapid fill conditions that occur as Patrick described, but this is hampered by the probe being a bit flaky.

Recently, probably due to the weird hot/cold weather, most of my HDDs were partially demagnetised, including the newish 8 TB backup one. All seem to be fine but have lost data. A bit concerned, I logged in to the NAS box web interface to do SMART tests, and it seems one of the drives doesn't show up any more! Penri, when you go in, could you have a look at the lights on the NAS box to see? They should all be blue if everything is fine.

I'm think I might want to pull the drives out one at a time and do a non-destructive read-write test to remagnetise everything just in case. I suspect the enclosure provides enough insulation to keep the temperature stable enough, but can't be too careful.

Thoughts?

[Penri]

Hello

The sump probe was changes around a month ago (13Mar21), it is still exhibiting erratic behaviour?

I'll take a look at the NAS later today.


Penri

[hamishmb]

No idea actually, haven't looked since then. Patrick?

And okay cool

[Penri]

This morning.

NAS has 4 blue lights showing.

River water just about tricking into sump but all water sections full, sump level low. Added some water from Hanham Butts and flow resumed to normal. Then added some mains water back into Hanham butts.

It would be good to see whether this activity is reflected in status reports / logs.

[hamishmb]

Hmm okay, I'll have a look and SSH in to the NAS box and the pis.

[PatrickW]

The sump probe was changes around a month ago (13Mar21), it is still exhibiting erratic behaviour?

Not that I've noticed. It has seemed pretty stable to me. I have been looking at the Engineer GUI now and then to see if anything odd is going on.

When I said I thought it the sensor fault could have been causing water loss, what I meant was that that was a theory I had had prior to the probe being fixed, and then I went on to ponder my next theory (which is probably also wrong, by the sounds of things).

[hamishmb]

I have managed to confirm that one of the drives in the NAS box is bad remotely. Might be a good time to swap in the 1TB spare I gave you?