Thomas shares makes

Rainwater Pump and filter box

I chose to place our our rainwater tank's pump and filter in the garden shed slightly away from the main house. This allowed for a cheaper pump outside the tank and minimizes in-house technical equipment and noise.

Rainwater Tank Plumbing

After having the rainwater tank installed and connected to the roof, there was still quite some plumbing missing. The filter and calmed inlet add up to hundreds of euros. In my case the way the tubes were connected to the tank made off the shelve filters unusable, so I opted to DIY everything.

Rainwatertank Level Sensor

Mechanical sensor parts assembled with a very short sensor tube to fit the picture.

This project idea scored 3/3 stars, combining electronics, water and creating something from scratch. I couldn't resist building my own reed switch array water level sensor.

This kind of sensor has a floating part moving up and down a sensor tube.

It's not an off the shelve solution to sensing water levels, buying a water pressure sensor or an ultrasonic level sensor would probably be easier, but DIY is fun!

My goal was to do some electronics and 3D design, 3D print, experiment and get a circuit board fabricated. I'd build a sensor using easily obtainable parts whenever possible. The electronics should be easy to build at home.

I will use it to monitor and log the water level in Home Assistant. Getting to automate the adding of a minimal amount of tap water to the tank during the summer will be a useful feature.

DIY Automatic condensation water pump

In 2015 we moved into a house which had a condensing gas boiler. When the previous owners installed it, they never installed a drain pipe to dispose of the water that it produces. Instead there was... a bucket that had to be emptied every week. I quickly grew tired of emptying the bucket. With no obvious way to direct the water except over the ceiling, I needed a device that would pump the water. This sounded like a fun DIY project, so I ordered some float switches and a 12VDC membrane pump, then got busy and soldered a simple set/reset controller with... Guess which old-school IC...