Topic: Installing the wind extension kit, any experience/advice out there?

[ggsteve]

I was in Maine last week so I visited the mothership in Trenton and bought the wind extension kit for my Mk III and a second monomount to move my sensor array lower on the eve of the roof for easier maintenance access (damned spiders).

Honestly,  the wind extension is little more than a 2' length of PVC with a special cap for the sensor array and 50' of wind cable with a fitting I haven't figured out yet.  I want to mount the anemometer 7-10' above the roof peak but I don't want to mess with guy wires.  The monomount is pretty stiff, will a PVC mast secured to the monomount be rigid enough?

[ggsteve]

I finally got my son over to help with the upgrade of my Mk III to separate the wind vane from the main sensor array.  I took us a couple of hours, but like any job you've never done before the work would move much faster if we were to do it again. 

The first step was to install a second mono mount on the eve of the roof where I moved the main sensor array to for more convenient access.  Before slipping the array onto the new mount I removed the wind vane and replaced it with the new cap.

The disassembly of the wind vane from the array is easy.  One screw and the vane lifts off.  Then disconnect the cat5 cable.  The wind extension kit suppies a new cap for the array that has a fitting to support the humidity sensor at the correct height in the array.  The cap attaches with one screw.  The hardest part of the disassembly was carefully working the internal cat5 cable from the wind sensor.  Once this was removed it was on to the extension kit. 

The extension kit is mainly a pvc tube that the wind vane perches on top of.  You are supposed to feed the 50' cat5 cable through the tube to the wind wane and secure it with a snug fitting at the bottom of the tube that keeps the cable from moving.  I had planned to use 2 stainless hose clamps to then clamp the pvc tube to the mono mount at the peak of the roof after about an hour at Home Depot trying different fittings for a more elegant solution. 

Fast forward to assembly day.  I all of a sudden realized that the plastic tube that Rainwise provides to mount the sensor array on the mono mount fit perfectly with a $.79 straight 1 1/4" pvc coupler, and the wind extension tube fit perfectly as well.  This is a very elegant and neat solution.  This meant drilling a hole in the pvc wind extension tube about 2" above the coupling to thread the cat5 cable out the side.  The cable was then secured to the pvc and mono mount with a number of zip ties.  I then fed the cat5 cable down the roof line to the sensor array.  The new cat5 cable fed into the electronics unit on the array much easier than getting the old one out.  Once connected I sealed up the electronics chamber, cleaned the spider debris out of the now conveniently located rain bucket and turned the unit back on.  Shes's working perfectly.  Here are some pictures:

Here are both units on their respective roof mounts:



Here is the main sensor array moved to the eve:



Here is the wind extension at the peak of the roof.  It is much more low profile than the whole array up there:



The wind extension from the front of the house:



One more of both units from the back yard:

[W3DRM]

Well done!    Nice tidy job.

[miraculon]

Looks good. Gotta love those J-masts....

Greg H.

[mvignola29]

I am very new to Weather Stations and have the same one you have any wonder how you deal with Snow and Ice. You station in the pictures are located in an area that would be very difficult to remove snow from the rain sensor. When I installed my system I was concerned about those weather issues and installed it on top of my deck. (See Attached) My station is still around 40 feet from the ground and at least this way I can reach the station with a step ladder to remove snow. I see that you are located in MA and wonder how much the winter weather impact the readings for your station. I do like the look of your setup, Any info is appreciated.

[ggsteve]

I am very new to Weather Stations and have the same one you have any wonder how you deal with Snow and Ice. You station in the pictures are located in an area that would be very difficult to remove snow from the rain sensor. When I installed my system I was concerned about those weather issues and installed it on top of my deck. (See Attached) My station is still around 40 feet from the ground and at least this way I can reach the station with a step ladder to remove snow. I see that you are located in MA and wonder how much the winter weather impact the readings for your station. I do like the look of your setup, Any info is appreciated.

There are two ways of dealing with snow and ice on your electronic weather station.  One is to ignore the snow and ice and expect invalid precipitation data until winter is over.  Obviously, the snow/ice will not melt naturally at a fast enough pace to count the precipitation data up here in Mass and a lot of it sublimates never to be counted anyway.  You don't have to remove the snow, it won't harm anything.  The good folks at Rainwise in Trenton, ME have made the unit to survive our winters.  Only once did the snow get deep enough and sticky enough on my unit to where the pile of snow interfered with the wind vane.  That lasted about a day and this thread is partially about how I just solved that problem for good!

The other option is to install a heater designed for the rain bucket that you plug in when winter precipitation occurs.  As far as I know, Rainwise does not make such a heater, but there is a thread on here by someone who adapted a Davis heater into a Rainwise rain bucket and it worked great.  There are other threads showing different home made heaters as well.

Now that I have moved my station and separated the wind vane a heater might be the next upgrade.  Oh, good luck with your station, it looks great on the side of the deck!  You will still want/need to access your station for maintenance, so keep it where you can get at it (main reason for moving mine).  Spiders and debris in your rain bucket are much more of a problem than snow.  Also, batteries and even sensors don't last forever.

[mvignola29]

I really did not give it any though being new at having a weather station but I guess that when it snows the rain sensor readings would not be of much value. So I guess having snow sitting on it should not make any difference.  The heater approach I think  would not provide much value info and providing a power source also would be somewhat difficult. Will the snow collecting on the system cause temp reading to be off. That I guess would be one of the important reading during the winter period I would want to be accurate as possible.
With my system the wind sensor is part of the station. I assume the benefit in having the wind sensors located in an higher position is to makes the reading more accurate? Does that sound right?
Again being very new at this when I did my research on the various system prior to purchasing one, the Rainwise which was one of the more expensive system was a more durable system. I was not able to really get much feedback from users compared with the Davis system. So that was the main reason I got this one.
I at the time did not know of this forum where there seems to be more useful info on various systems. How long have you had your station? I have been told that the battery should last around 5 years, and that it is not difficult to replace.   
Are there any other issues or concerns I should be aware of Rainwise stations?

[ggsteve]

I have had my station for just about two years.  The battery is still in good working order, and is a good quality heavy duty battery.  It is easy to access right behind the cover of the electronics chamber on the station.  I did have one vexing problem with my Rainwise station that it took them about 6 months to get fixed.  A small number of users experienced erroneous wind direction data where the wind rose would bounce back and forth from where ever it was supposed to be to South and back again.  Once they sent me a new circuit board I have had no problems with the unit except for maintenance issues such as spiders in my rain gauge.