How we monitor our rainharvested water level remotely

Mark grew up on a farm that relied on bore and tank water. Water was a vital resource. Showers were quick, and if anyone took too long his dad would turn off the tap from the wetback to the hot water cylinder to cut off the flow of hot water and cut short the person’s shower.  

While Mark & I lived in city apartments connected to mains water in Auckland, Sydney and London, we honestly didn’t give much thought to our water usage. Most people don’t because everything just works – turn on the tap, turn on the shower and water flows.  

When we moved onto our property though all those childhood memories came flooding back as we looked at how we would harvest, store and conserve water as a vital resource once more. Mark became obsessed with rainfall, wanting to know how much we were collecting whenever it rained.  

He looked at tank gauge options available at the time and concluded that they were too pricey, largely because they required an expensive ongoing subscription to access the water level data. I remember him getting frustrated and deciding to wait, we even discussed the obvious gap in the market and whether we should invent a gauge that would send data about the water level in real time to an app on our phones.  

Luckily, we didn’t have to. A few months after that discussion Mark found that Blue Mountain Co, the company that supplied a manual gauge for our grey water system, had developed a remote gauge that would suit our needs. 

Mark installed their Tank Gauge Plus on one of our 30,000 litre tanks to monitor the levels in the two connected 30,000 litre tanks we use to store rainwater collected from our roof. Since these tanks are connected via a pipe at the bottom and the water flows between the two so each holds an equal amount, we just double the amount shown on the gauge. 

Now we can see how much water we have at any time via an app, since the gauge sends real-time updates every 10 minutes via Bluetooth. When we’re away from home we can still check the levels remotely thanks to their Sigfox system. This is an ongoing subscription, but since it’s free for the first 12 months and only $25 a year after that it was a lot more affordable compared to the other solutions Mark had looked at. 

Now they’re easy to pick up from Mitre 10, we’ve got a second gauge to install on the 10,000 litre tank behind The Bath House. That tank is at the highest point of our property, a concept we learned from researching permaculture principles. By storing water at the highest point, it means we can use gravity to deliver that water to wherever we need to use it.  

We expected it to be a hot, dry summer. While there’s been more rain than anticipated, we’ve still been monitoring our water levels closely to ensure we have plenty for drinking, washing, and irrigation. This gauge makes it easy for us to decide when we need to change how we’re using water or buy water in.  

Thankfully there’s been no need (so far) for me to turn Mark’s shower cold to hurry him up.