July 2020 onwards - River System Status

[Penri]

Patrick

Thank you for these observations they are very interesting.

The surface area of a butts group (5 barrels) is around 3 times that of the sump as far as I remember. I need to find my notes of the surface area measurements for roofs, etc. To make make some sense of the amount of water arriving in the butts verses the amount being ‘deposited’.

All the Lady Hannah butt groups are linked with valves that are currently open, the water from the building roof is channeled through the centre group. The sharp rise a fall does not look right, there may be a faulty probe.

I’m surprised the sump recorded such high values when the Wendy butts are “only” at around 300ish.

It’s been some time since we’ve tried to look at overall system performance so the information is great, thank you.

Penri

[Penri]

Patrick

Thank you for these observations they are very interesting.

The surface area of a butts group (5 barrels) is around 3 times that of the sump as far as I remember. I need to find my notes of the surface area measurements for roofs, etc. To make make some sense of the amount of water arriving in the butts verses the amount being ‘deposited’.

All the Lady Hannah butt groups are linked with valves that are currently open, the water from the building roof is channeled through the centre group. The sharp rise a fall does not look right, there may be a faulty probe.

I’m surprised the sump recorded such high values when the Wendy butts are “only” at around 300ish.

It’s been some time since we’ve tried to look at overall system performance so the information is great, thank you.

Penri

[Penri]

Apologies for the double post, finger trouble!

I’ll trot into WMT a little later to see how things look on the ground.

[hamishmb]

Quick thought: if the Stage valve is open most of the time, we may have artificially higher mai9ns water usage if there's a leak in one of those groups, but also because when the levels is below 300mm, there's not enough head pressure for it to flow back into the sump - we may have created a situation where the system works less efficiently in the presence of leaks, because the high of water in the butts won't go up as fast.

That said, I don't know how much of the time the stage valve is actually open, so this might just be complete hyperbole.

[PatrickW]

The stage valve has indeed been open for most of the time. The criteria for opening it is, roughly, [stage_butts_level > 0 AND wendy_butts_level < full ], which has been true the majority of the time so far.

If this is considered a problem, the criteria could be changed to [stage_butts_level > wendy_butts_level − base_height_offset_between_wendy_butts_and_stage_butts AND wendy_butts_level < full]. I tended to think it didn't matter, because the same amount of water is held either way. But, I did not consider the need for head pressure.

[TerryJC]

But, I did not consider the need for head pressure.

Once the Matrix Pump has been installed and commissioned, head pressure will be provided by it and there will be no need to worry about the height difference between the supplying butts and the receiving butts.

[Penri]

Hello

I've just returned from WMT, the status at approx. 11:50 was:

Sump full and overflowing into soaraway, measurement float floating.
Circulation pump on
Wendy Butts pump off
Wendy butts around 400mm, measurement float floating
Stage buts around 100mm, measurement float floating
Hanham butts average around 500mm, measurement float floating

No sign of any gross leaks in the butts plumbing (ie I didn't see water gushing anywhere but it wet from the rain).

I turned Wendy butts pump on manually using the SSR1 toggle switch and shifted around half the sumps volume into the Wendy butts.

Patrick, I need to think about your suggestion.

Penri

[hamishmb]

But, I did not consider the need for head pressure.

Once the Matrix Pump has been installed and commissioned, head pressure will be provided by it and there will be no need to worry about the height difference between the supplying butts and the receiving butts.

Yes, but this still won't fix the head pressure issue between the Wendy butts and the Sump, where the wendy butts need around 300mm for it to flow back to the sump, unless I've misunderstood how it will work?

[TerryJC]

Yes, but this still won't fix the head pressure issue between the Wendy butts and the Sump, where the wendy butts need around 300mm for it to flow back to the sump, unless I've misunderstood how it will work?

True, but did say between supplying and receiving butts.

As long as the Wendy Butts have been topped up from the other Butts Groups using the Matrix Pump, there will be sufficient head in the Wendy Butts to keep the Sump supplied. (Until there is no water left in the system.)

[PatrickW]

Penri, the logs on sumppi show that the software was trying to enable the Wendy butts pump prior to your manual intervention. So if the pump wasn't running and it hadn't been disabled by a manual override, then I think something must be wrong between the software and the SSR.

Edit: Sorry, just realised I basically as much as said this already in my first post this morning. But, just to confirm, the software was still trying to turn the pump on right up until the water level dropped from the manual intervention.