It was another interesting night for Enlight. We have been trying our hardest to get the north end fixed, but the fountain is not cooperating with us. The solenoid that fills the north end is working and responding to the water level sensor but is making a terrible grinding noise. Water is flowing in the pipes, but we don’t want to take the chance the something is broken and could overflow the pool. We’ve also encountered a pipe that is leaking badly through the insulation wrapped around the pipe. That stretch of pipe and insulation will have to be replaced.
On a good note, we were able to make the control room a bit quieter. We disconnected the weirs from the main air feed. Because the weirs leaked air both above and below, we always had to deal with the hissing. Now we don’t have to! Later that night, we also went over the LabView and C# code that controls the fountain with the new members.
The fountain controlling Kiosk in Engineering Hall now has two new features! After 45 seconds of viewing a different tab from the control tab, the kiosk will automatically switch back to the control tab. Second, whenever the kiosk crashes, we will receive an email letting us know that we need to restart the kiosk and also the geeky details of it’s failure. We hope that these features will enable us to help make the kiosk using experience better for everyone.
If you have a suggestion for kiosk features, come to our meeting 6pm on Tuesdays near room 1099 or send us an email at enlight-members@engr.wisc.edu
With the North End drained, we’ve been able to fix up the broken purger. Under normal operation, the purger spins the water around and every few hours, it purgers some water to remove the sediment it collects. One of the two purgers got jammed. We removed the valve motor controller and found that the gear assembly got jammed open. After messing around with it, we were eventually able to remove the motor and attach the valve to the purger. It now acts as a manual valve.
In addition to fixing the purger, we also accidentally fixed the solenoid that filled the north end. For a period of time, it was not responding to the fill command from the north end. When we reopened the pipes in the bypass, the solenoid was open and sending water to the north end. We are not sure if the power cycle fixed the solenoid, or if it needed to have no water flowing on it so it could reset itself. Either way, water should be flowing and the north end should be filling again.
This time, it is an electric problem. It appears that the problem is twofold. First, the water separator is stuck open and draining the north end pool. The only way to fix this is to drain the north end pool, open the separator, and see what’s up. The next problem is that we are unable to fill the north end because the solenoid that controls the fill valve is not receiving power. This may also be the case for the lights, but we are not 100% sure. There will be an electrician in soon to see what is going on. We wanted to see if we could fill the pool manually, but as you could guess, it is better to let the computer take care of it rather than us try to regulate the flow. In the end, we accidentally overflowed the pool.
Presently, the north end is draining/drained. We will attempt to service this as quickly as possible.
During a two day long adventure, Enlight has been searching for answers relating to why the north end of the fountain (the part closest to W Johnson St.) has been draining. It has drained to the point where there is no water left in the pool and the concrete is starting to dry out! It’s actually a funny story.
You see, many pipes in the underground are labeled the wrong way. There will be arrows showing the direction of flow that lead to other arrows pointing the other way. This does not help us figure things out. We testing pipes for water and eventually got a rather unusual model for how things work. It seems that the north end pool acts as the reservoir for the reservoir that spills back into the pool. If that doesn’t make sense, that’s ok. This is just one of the many quirks.
Anyways, the line that actually feeds into the pool (or reservoir) is opened and closed by a solenoid (or computer controlled water valve). It appears that this solenoid may have died on us, and we need to replace this in order to keep the water flowing. To make matters worse, it appears that a particle separator is stuck in a purge cycle that is causing it to constantly drain water from the pool. With no water entering and water leaving, we are left in a world of hurt. We are hoping to resolve these issues as soon as possible before we have to turn it off for the winter!
blog, Electrical, Maquina Project, North End
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Bubble Towers, Fail, Filter Cleaning, Fountain Control, Fountain Repairs, Mechanical, North End, North End Mister, Separator
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