I have a sort of unique situation with my water on my farm. I am trying to become more independent of city water by harvesting rain water and developing ponds, but still have a connection to water from the city. My property is long in one dimension and the run from the water main meter and cut-ff valve runs about 1/3 mile across the property before it makes it to the farm house and shed area.
Regrettably, I have had several water leaks costing me lots of money over the last few years as soil shifts and things occasionally freeze and break without being noticed for quite a while. And now it has happened again and I am fed up with paying for the wasted water. I now have a cut-off valve that I can control just after the city water main and have been turning it on an off when I leave the property. Unfortunately, it is in an inconvenient spot and persons who use the property do not always turn it off. I want to devise a sort of remote, perhaps servo controlled valve where I now have the manual cut-off valve. I will have to figure out how to get the control signal to the valve, but for now I am just trying to design the valve apparatus.
My water main line is a 2" pipe. I cannot seem to find an servo controlled valve to suite this purpose. They probably exist, but I haven't found them. There are pool water servo valves, but they operate at lower pressures for diverting water to spas, waterfalls, etc. There are large sprinkler system type valves and the largest I have found is 1.5" controlled with a 24 watt solenoid.
Problems with large solenoid valve: 1) large amount of power required for something that will probably have to be solar powered. A DC polarized solenoid that simply has a pulsed on / off signal would be nice. These are available for home systems but haven't seen them for a large valve. 2) sudden on-off not good for a long and large pipe due to the hammer effect of the water on the system. Perhaps an array of several valves or a small one in parallel with a large one could reduce the likelihood of the hammer effect. This would require a bit of electronic programming which I could devise, but the problem of power use for the large solenoid is still an issue.
Ideally, a large servo gate valve might do the trick. It would not require constant power once it has achieved its valve position and it could open and close slowly and gently in order not to destroy the plumbing system 1/3 mile away.
Any ideas here on this problem?
Thanks for reading!
Regrettably, I have had several water leaks costing me lots of money over the last few years as soil shifts and things occasionally freeze and break without being noticed for quite a while. And now it has happened again and I am fed up with paying for the wasted water. I now have a cut-off valve that I can control just after the city water main and have been turning it on an off when I leave the property. Unfortunately, it is in an inconvenient spot and persons who use the property do not always turn it off. I want to devise a sort of remote, perhaps servo controlled valve where I now have the manual cut-off valve. I will have to figure out how to get the control signal to the valve, but for now I am just trying to design the valve apparatus.
My water main line is a 2" pipe. I cannot seem to find an servo controlled valve to suite this purpose. They probably exist, but I haven't found them. There are pool water servo valves, but they operate at lower pressures for diverting water to spas, waterfalls, etc. There are large sprinkler system type valves and the largest I have found is 1.5" controlled with a 24 watt solenoid.
Problems with large solenoid valve: 1) large amount of power required for something that will probably have to be solar powered. A DC polarized solenoid that simply has a pulsed on / off signal would be nice. These are available for home systems but haven't seen them for a large valve. 2) sudden on-off not good for a long and large pipe due to the hammer effect of the water on the system. Perhaps an array of several valves or a small one in parallel with a large one could reduce the likelihood of the hammer effect. This would require a bit of electronic programming which I could devise, but the problem of power use for the large solenoid is still an issue.
Ideally, a large servo gate valve might do the trick. It would not require constant power once it has achieved its valve position and it could open and close slowly and gently in order not to destroy the plumbing system 1/3 mile away.
Any ideas here on this problem?
Thanks for reading!
