Cumulus Support

Everything has been boringly reliable on my system now, for several years. Not even batteries going flat, since I brought the batteries indoors and doubled them up with two sets of AA's in parallel, so I could swap one set, whilst the other kept the station running - though I have not even needed to test that yet, despite the set being installed a few years ago.

Over the past few months, what I have noticed, is the rain gauge often failing to log any rain, despite it being obvious it as rained. Sometimes it logged it, sometimes it missed it. Opening it up, it was full of detritus and webs. Cleaning it out, it did seem to work - better, but it still missed some rain.

Nice day today, though thunderstorms forecast, so I got the ladder out for a more detailed look at the gauge. What I found was the two core wire, where it went onto the tiny PCB where the reed switch is mounted - the soldered ends of the cable were a little green looking with verdigris. Obviously moisture and atmosphere had got to the end of the cable. Cutting the end of and trying to resolder was impossible, the copper cores were quite blackened. I had to strip the cable cores back 12" to get it back to bright copper which could be soldered.

A quick test and the rain sensor is now working properly.

Good job, I hope you have put some sealant over the new soldered joints.

No, but I blathered them with grease to keep the moisture out.

Well, that fix didn't last long, my rain gauge soon stopped reporting again. I got around to investigating again yesterday afternoon and quickly found that the reed switch had failed closed circuit. I don't remember doing it, but it showed evidence of my having replaced it in the past, so I made an assumption that somewhere in the house, I maybe had some spare reed switches, in one of my workshops. I began my search in my garage workshop small parts drawers, of which I have around a hundred drawers. Something must have been smiling on me, because I found a tiny cellophane packet with 10 reed switches in it, in the third drawer I looked in. I wasn't even sure they were reed switches, they might have been pcb glass fuses, but a quick test with a magnet confirmed they were reed switches.

Fitted and a quick test confirmed it was once again working and 6.6mm of overnight rain further confirmed it.