Hi guys,
I am relatively new to the site and if you read my posts so far, you'll see I'm all over the map. That's the way I am when I'm trying to figure out the right path to go down. I'm smack dab in the middle of planning here, and I want my system to be as automated as possible, with every fail safe in place that I can think of. With that said, my speed bump a the moment is temperature probes. My pop is an old time electrician and he taught me about voltage drop over long runs of cable. This is at house current mind you. That's leads me to what I'm trying to understand now. If I end up going with a heat storage tank (or two, as I'm currently thinking...in my furnace room...I'm lucky to have what the home inspector called "a lot of house", in a non-McMansion kind of way) to use with my wood/coal, and I want to measure the top/middle/bottom temperature of both tanks, if I use LM35s or any other probe, by the time I run the wire to my monitoring station (20 feet plus), wouldn't voltage drop be an issue? With such low voltage, the drop has to be significant. I'm thinking the signal will be worthless by the time it gets there. If I'm missing something, please let me know. Maybe it's as simple as manually checking the voltage at the probe and then at the monitor and calibrating from there??? If that is the case I'm thinking I need to do that check at my anticipated maximum and minimum temperature so I have the full calibration range??? This has had me head scratching for about a week now.
Thanks for the help. On a warmth note, I had the house at 85 on Saturday night (which is why I desperately want heat storage!!), it got warm on Sunday (50s) and there's been no furnace activity (except for DHW) since, but the house has been upper 70s the whole time. Tonight the outside temps are dropping fast but the Whitfield is holding up so far.
Thanks also for reading my long-winded post. To anyone that can help, please do.
I am relatively new to the site and if you read my posts so far, you'll see I'm all over the map. That's the way I am when I'm trying to figure out the right path to go down. I'm smack dab in the middle of planning here, and I want my system to be as automated as possible, with every fail safe in place that I can think of. With that said, my speed bump a the moment is temperature probes. My pop is an old time electrician and he taught me about voltage drop over long runs of cable. This is at house current mind you. That's leads me to what I'm trying to understand now. If I end up going with a heat storage tank (or two, as I'm currently thinking...in my furnace room...I'm lucky to have what the home inspector called "a lot of house", in a non-McMansion kind of way) to use with my wood/coal, and I want to measure the top/middle/bottom temperature of both tanks, if I use LM35s or any other probe, by the time I run the wire to my monitoring station (20 feet plus), wouldn't voltage drop be an issue? With such low voltage, the drop has to be significant. I'm thinking the signal will be worthless by the time it gets there. If I'm missing something, please let me know. Maybe it's as simple as manually checking the voltage at the probe and then at the monitor and calibrating from there??? If that is the case I'm thinking I need to do that check at my anticipated maximum and minimum temperature so I have the full calibration range??? This has had me head scratching for about a week now.
Thanks for the help. On a warmth note, I had the house at 85 on Saturday night (which is why I desperately want heat storage!!), it got warm on Sunday (50s) and there's been no furnace activity (except for DHW) since, but the house has been upper 70s the whole time. Tonight the outside temps are dropping fast but the Whitfield is holding up so far.
Thanks also for reading my long-winded post. To anyone that can help, please do.