My best pump control house ever made
April 24, 2020The former owner of La Mina San Cayetano had many unfinished projects. When I asked him why he had not completed it he answered that he got bored many times with a project and moved on to another project. I thought about this and did not understand it. Completing projects give you a positive boost, which you can use to ignite your next project and get on steam with it. There is a fair chance that you won't complete half finished project and the more time it's on hold being 'under construction' the more difficult it seems to pick it up again.
But guess what ? I have the tendency to do the same as David Coldwell did. All projects take more time than expected due to inexperience or unpleasant surprises. Your motivation arch has a certain span and when this has been reached you really have to be determined to continue. The life slogan "By endurance we conquer" of the Antantic explorer Ernest Shackleton comes to mind many times.
One of the unfinished projects of David was making a decent control housing for all utility wiring and tubing for the house we live in. It's just coming out of the upper wall, the water for our house is going through the air, including the telephone and internet cables - which is not really uncommon here in Spain. And it is not really out of sight either: every time I walk up or down the stairs to our house I see it and it annoys us like a souring tooth ache.
At the start of this year we decided to focus on taking on projects around our house as this immediately creates more satisfaction as we are living there. When (Gerben, partner of Sara) complained about a missing step in the unfinished stairs to our house, I first thought 'who cares, we put a brick there temporarily'. But later I came to my senses and agreed with him and this lead to the condition for this year that most work should be related to something you use or see daily. And so we work on this staircase, make it wider, create a natural wall along side of it and... make a housing for all utility wiring and tubing.
It has just been completed and it's something to be proud of. Let's sum up what has been done:
- Everything under the ground. A trench has been dug to our house for all utility wiring and tubing. Everything goes in a sturdy corrugated 16 cm tube.
- Pressure pump. The pressure pump at the back of our house has been moved to the pump / control house, resulting in less noise and giving also pressure to the veggie garden and other gardens around the house.
- Water expansion tank. An expansion tank has been installed in the pump house which prevents the pump to switch on/off all the time, which increases the life span of the pump.
- Irrigation controller. A Rainbird irrigation controller with 6 groups has been installed for all gardens around the house. It's wifi enabled, so I should be able to control the watering anywhere and it should have a feature to limit the watering based upon the weather conditions. I mention 'should' because it's not working and when Googling on problems with this you find tons of bad reviews. I am still trying to get it work with the help of Winfryd, but so far unsuccessfully.
- Water filter. Before the water comes in the pump it's being filtered. This is especially important for the solonoid valves of the irrigation controller groups. These are very vulnerable for small debris like needles of pine trees, leaves, snails etc.
- Decalcifier, to remove lime stone from the water. The connection has already been installed, but I have not found the right solution yet for doing this. My idea was using an old hospital infusion pump. You can buy these on eBay or Amazon for little money. So I bought one with the idea to add concentrated acid to the water in a controlled manner. I can't get this infusion pump to work properly, it keeps giving the 'empty bag' error message and stops. I am now looking for a pump with a similar principle (a peristaltic pump principle), which is commonly used for aquariums and for hydro plant cultures. After some searching I found one on AliExpress for less than €100 including shipping.
- Internet/wifi access point. Hardwired directly from the fiber optic router I have installed a wifi access point for a good internet connection around the house.
- Pressure meter. To monitor the pressure, if the pressure goes down slowly while no water is being used you have a leak. Very important as you can waste tons of water without knowing - especially now you can't hear the pump very clearly anymore.
- Water meter. Still missing, but it's easy to connect and I found many new water meters on an auction site of a company that went bust.
Next project ?
We are now busy with a water collecting grid under the main gate. Ideal timing as no guests are here and if we need to go out we are using the down gate. Either today or tomorrow the concrete will be poured, but it's quite a challenging project, especially making the form for what below the steel grid, which has been made by Ondrej last year. I will tell you about it in my next blog next week.
Well.. have a nice weekend and stay healthy.
Greetings,
Ans, Mark & Borre
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