Save yourself time and money. Get a Water Witch. Look in Defenders Catalog they are $31.00 no moving parts and last forever. Joe In a message dated 11/15/2010 4:35:13 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 04:32:49PM -0500, [email protected] wrote: > > Many years ago I saw a float switch on a friend's boat that used a plastic > toilet float, piece of 1/4" threaded rod and a normal household toggle > switch in a plastic handy-box. He said it worked well. So I made one on > my boat with a ss spring to pull the switch up (ON) and a string tied to a > gallon milk jug partially filled with sand as a float in the bilge. It has > worked flawlessly for three decades. The switch handle has a hole drilled > in it with a wire gizmo to attach the spring and the string. > > So some float switches do work fine and last a long time, just not the kind > Rule makes. That's actually pretty similar to what I'd use, except I went with deluxe components. :) Relatively heavy stainless ball float attached to a rod which rides in two stainless bushings way above the bilgewater; the rod either pushes on a long-travel switch, or (better option) the bushings themselves are the switch contacts, and there's a Teflon sleeve that insulates the rod from the bushing when it's all the way down, with a flexible stainless "finger" to keep a very slight side pressure on the rod so that it always touches the bushing. Very simple and very tough. Three decades sorta makes the case against the "baseline failure" scenario - and Norm beat me on the cost, too. :) (Milk jug with sand... well done!) -- OKOPNIK CONSULTING Custom Computing Solutions For Your Business Expert-led Training | Dynamic, vital websites | Custom programming 443-250-7895 http://okopnik.com http://twitter.com/okopnik _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/liveab [email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
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