Oil tank monitors
 

Anyone on here have one?

Currently have a level gauge stick thing on the front of the tank, but due to recent groundwork and and trellis/planting around the tank, its difficult to get at the gauge.

Seen two things, there is an oil watchman, basic LCD display, and a smart monitor which gives more info rather then just an LCD display.

Just wondering if anyone has experience of these, or something similar

Hi,
We have the older style watchman that uses a capacitive sensor dipped into the tank.
This is quite old now and we intend to replace it with a newer model - which I believe now uses ultrasonic from a unit mounted on top of tank - so nothing dipping down inside.
I believe you can now get models with an alarm that sounds if tank is suddenly draining (leak or theft).
Cheers
Steve

yes, I have a Watchman (basic LCD display one I think)

works pretty well tbh

you have to replace the batteries in the sender unit - about every two years

(which is a con, as they pretend it is some special "battery tube" - when in fact just a bit of plumbers copper pipe with 3 AA batteries in - lol)

Cheers both.

I've read about this "battery tube" thingy. Anything I've read seem to hint that's now superseded by two of those big round batteries.

yeah a real con, about £30.00, but in reality a couple of AA batteries

simple youtube videos show you how to remove them from your one and replace the batteries (with standard AA ones)

ours is just a level indicator - which for my needs is fine, our tank is well away from the road so we don't really need the theft warning stuff

we just used it as a level indicator, so I don't have to go to the tank - and it works pretty well

Unreliable in my experience. Watchman alarm and an Apollo one as had two oil tanks at one time. Transmission doesn't work well through stone walls. Randomly warns tank being emptied with alarm in the middle of the night.

have to say never had a problem with ours (in fact it has been one of the better performing bits of technology I have)

the tank is about 40ft was and not in line of site either - but no thick stone wall tbh

Have ordered an olive Heating Oil Smart Sensor

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

cool,

let us know how you get on with it

Apollo one seems to get bad reviews in general from what I see.
Watchman seems to be ok, but all you have is a plug with a display on it, people say batteries only last a year or so.
Stone walls are probably always going to cause havoc.

The device I've ordered, well time will tell, but the reviews all appear to be decent, I contacted the supplier and they emailed me promptly saying battery life is expected to be 5 years.
I liked it because its internet based, and they also told me that Amazon Echo integration is on the radar, which appeals to me too.

Wow! I was doing this self-same search yesterday & looking for a WiFi based one, but they are thin on the ground with Watchman/Apollo being nearly the only names bar a couple of US suppliers of expensive stuff & a subscription based one. Probably doesn't help my google goes via Ireland at work :rolleyes:

Your find looks to be just the job, I'll be getting one too - thank you :thumb:

Well, I can't fault their customer service one bit so far.
Mine is arriving tomorrow, so will get it setup on Saturday I hope, as off to Dubai on Monday for a week

Not oil, but you'll see the funny side :)

Many years ago, I worked for a boat building company who made GRP lifeboats.

We bought our resin in bulk, usually 5K-10K gallons at time

We had two big bulk storage tanks

Both had electronic gauges, but both were notorious for giving a wrong

reading (usually reporting 0 or a low number when the tank actually had a

couple of thousand gallons in it.

To combat this we used a sophisticated method to find out how much resin was left ...... A stick !!

We would dip the tank and could tell how full or empty the tank was...

simple but effective.

One day a tanker arrived, and the driver didnt have any details of how

much we needed, so he checked the gauge ..

Yup you guessed it... the gauge said 0... so he connected up, dialled in 5k

gallons and started pumping...

The tanks were in a bunded room the bund height being about 48"

Filled the lot :D:D

Down side was we had to clear it out by hand / bucket!!!

if only he'd checked the dip stick lol

Mart :D

Hi,
Dubai - holiday or work?
You are coming at the right time - the weather is amazing at the moment (apart from early morning fog, until it burns off).
26 degrees C during the day and cool evenings!
We were in the bar/nightclub last night on top of the Yas Viceroy - it's the hotel that the F1 cars pass under on the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix- this bar is on the open roof terrace, inside the structure that lights up the outside of the hotel.
Cheers
Steve

Holiday Steve. Only for a week, but looking forward to it.
Going to Ferrari world, booked to go to Burj Khalifa, wife wants to see a James Bond exhibition.
Looking to book a helicopter trip when there I think, would love to see the Palm from the sky.
Figure out what else we're doing over the weekend

Hi,
You will have a great time.
We are going to Dubai tomorrow and might visit the Bond exhibition at the Burj Khalifa annex.
If you like gaming - make sure you visit Hub Zero at Citywalk - it's an amazing place.
At Ferrari world, make sure you try Flying Aces - if you like roller coasters - it's awesome!
Give me a shout if you want a tour of Abu Dhabi whilst you are over!
Cheers
Steve

this thread reminded me of a little job I had to do - left over from the summer

A friend in the village sold his house - but forgot to account for a recent heating Oil fill to his tank

anyway to cut a long story short, the buyer pissed him off over something - which cost him 15K so he was lamenting the fact that he had to give them a load of heating oil too

not so fast I said, I will have it (or as much as I could)

"how" was is reply

"worry not" I replied

so I went to my local garage and got an empty 250ltr oil drum

I filled it up with the Oil using the old gravity method - a bit smelly and messy but it did the job

I got it home (quite heavy!!!!)

it has sat there since the summer

my problem was how to get the Oil from the drum into my 2500ltr tank (which is quite high)

a little research and I bought a Drill Pump - that was back in the summer

and today I resolved to set it all up - and "pump baby pump"

and here we go


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.sco...c6aa0e1d55.jpg

worked brilliantly

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.sco...16610d565e.jpg

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.sco...72e6efad31.jpg

with the watchman sender unit (inc the battery tube)

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.sco...98193d64e9.jpg

when its completely empty - about 30ltr still left in

I will cut it in half and make a fire pit

Haven't installed my tank sensor yet, because I needed a different unit as my tank has windows in the middle. The company Olive however, have the best customer service I've seen for a very long time.



Hi Steve

Yes, brilliant time.
Amazing place Dubia, didn't really see much of Abu Dhabi.
Dubia, seriously clean, perfect roads - all looks new still.
Helicopter tour from Atlantis round the palm/the islands, over the city.

You don't really get how tall the Khalifa is until you're up the top, I suppose because everything else round it is so tall.
Bond exhibition was good too.

Taxi's dirt cheap.

Ferrari world. Didn't go on Flying aces, didn't fancy it as it had broken down when I got there, and didn't trust going on it after that.
Formula Rossa - feck me, the acceleration is unreal, then all of a sudden you're 170ft up in the air thinking WTF am I doing.
Had a couple of goes on it, went on most other stuff.

And fantastic weather

Bit of a surreal moment on the taxi journey back to Dubai, when the driver pulled over onto the hard shoulder to pray

Hi,
Glad you had a great time!
Don't forget - you only get about two thirds up the Burj Khakifa - around floors 121-124 and it has 163 floors.
Never had a taxi driver stop to pray when I was a passenger - hope he stopped the meter!
The rides are always breaking down at Ferrari world - the day we went it was the other way round - so I never got to go on the Formula Rossa ride.
Cheers
Steve

Yeah, he stopped the metre, and its was only for maybe 5 minute. Just found it really weird.

Got my Olive, just got to drill a hole & fit it but buggered if I can find the tank manufacturer :rolleyes:

Well, that was an easy install. Slightly oversized hole drill (50mm), tapped a couple of holes for the screws and that was nearly it. Probably spent too much time making sure the hole was dead centre and then adjusting the screws, putting in shims to get it 100% level but then I'm a bit anal. However, it worked and its sending data back to the server OK, just need for their tech support to decide on my tank.

Did you find the customer service to be really good also?
I sent customer service a picture of my tank, and had an answer within a few hours.
Still haven't down anything with mine yet, as I was in Glasgow for the last few days, so it'll be done at the weekend.

Be interested to here how yours is working out.

Customer service was fantastic. I fitted it Saturday afternoon & sent some pictures but as I had no tape measure used a dog ball thrower as a guide. Got an email back Sunday morning saying it was probably tank x and asking for the measurement of the guide when I got a moment. He'd set it to tank x and sure enough, started to get some readings through which equated to what I thought I had. A bonus is the temperature guage.

So that, coupled with my Hive allows me to plan how I heat the place when I'm not there and ensures that I won't inadvertently run out of oil in the process - awesome!

Long story short with my olive is that i needed a wave guide version because the tank has windows, this means that the standard sensor may not be able to get a proper reading.
Seems I might need to drill a bigger hole in the tank to fit the new sensor - 42mm.
My tank already has a predrilled hole of 32mm.

The install instructions do seem pretty easy, and it sound like your experience agrees with that.

Saturday morning

I think the instructions said 42mm max hole but I didn't have a hole cutter smaller than 50mm so used that and it was fine. I imagine as long as you leave a little bit of an internal lip to help keep the weather out, you will be fine.

All installed yesterday morning - dead easy as you know.
I presume its takes a while before it starts estimating how long your oil will last etc