Mc
,
This electronic thing kinda evolved
Once upon a time there was this bad dude who invented BYAP and had this band of fanatical AP followers who wanted to improve the concept
The problem came up that once a few large GBs were added to an AP system, the water floating around the GBs began to increase, so the idea was tossed up to have the GBs fed sequentially, thus reducing the amount of water meandering through the GBs to just over one GB full at any one time.
First there was the power door actuators, which were used to open and close flaps and thus divert water flow to feed only one GB at a time – this needed a sensor to activate when water reached a certain height in each GB.
A mechanical water level sensor was initially used, which worked on a float being raised by the rising water until 2 stainless steel bolts touched and activated the power door actuators. This had a couple of disadvantages:
1) It used small hinges that were in a high humidity area and were susceptible to rust causing resistance to the float raising consistently
2) The floats started getting buildup (barnacles) of bio film, became heavier and instead of activating around the 25mm (1”) mark, were activating later and thus the water level was rising higher in the GBs
3) The S/S contacts could get a bio film over the surface and thus cause a malfunction
So now we have a mod to the water level sensor (the light activated switch kit), this has only been in operation for a day but I believe it cancels out all the above disadvantages.
SteveS and TimC are working on similar applications and are in the design stage (mine is up and working
)
Hope that clears up a bit for you
Backyard Aquaponics
I bet you're tickle pink you stumbled on AP.....
(think it may need to be coupled to another box