The Problem
It's a simple problem really. As a project-management consultant I would fly out on Monday mornings, get abused by customers, then get back on Friday evenings totally stressed out. All I wanted to do then was relax -- a TV, a drink, and a hot Whirpool tub. The first two is easy, but the Whirlpool tub takes 45 minutes to an hour to fill up. Not good for an impatient person (me).The Idea
Hmmm... I already have a 40-45 minute drive home from the airport, so why not use that time to fill the tub. If I could rig the tub to the phone system, I could turn it on as soon as I get in my car at the airport.Some scribbling on paper got me this system -- phone line controls a switch, which turns on a valve. The (electrically controlled) valve would turn on the water flow to fill the tub. Very simple, but I could embellish it later with water-level detectors and temp control, etc.
Implementation
A bulk of this project is plumbing, to get the valve setup that will control the water flow. It's here in my electronic-projects section because I don't have a mechanical section, and because I know there's at least one electron flowing in a wire somewhere in this project. :-)First order of business was finding a valve. After much discussion with industrial valve suppliers over valves that would be able to handle hot water, and handle (somewhat unknown) residential water pressure, I was up in the $150-$200 range. And I needed another for the cold water side. I wasted much time investigating this when a friend mentioned that washing machines have valve for exactly this purpose. Arrggghhh!! A quick trip to an appliance parts store and $26 later, I had a valve with separate hot and cold water switching. It operated on 120VAC. Thanks Chris.
For control, I used X-10. An X-10 phone controller, receiver and switch (at the tub end) would turn the valve on and off for now.
Next, came the plumbing. There was a small access panel (under an adjoining sink) for the tub taps, but there was no way I could get enough access to the supply lines under the tub so I took the water supply from the sink supply. All I needed to do under the tub was splice the copper pipe to the spout for the valve's water output.
Implementation was very successful for this basic system, and served me very well so far. The following photos should be self explanatory, and mostly document the plumbing mods.
Next Stage
The next stage is to upgrade electronics with a water level detector to prevent overflowing, a temp sensor to allow for accurate temp control by independently switching the hot and cold sides of the valve separately. While I'm at it, I figured I'd put in a separate water detector on the floor as a backup. I'll confess that some "issues" while testing the basic system got me thinking about this. All of this will be controlled by a PIC microcontroller. This is the proposed system...
