Blogs take time. They also need proper content. I don't find my life that exciting and it's hard getting time to post anything of interest. Family consumes time. So do hobbies. Thus something must give and I'm forced into having it be this blog.
Okay, so after sitting for five years-ish I got our VW Bus running again and quite easily. A shot of gas dryer, a 1/2-gallon of fresh gas, and charged the batteries (starter and camping). A few cranks and she fired up and was 100% drive-able. Seriously! So the Bus is back in the shop and the camping trailer is being stored outside.
Oh yeah, we ended up buying a 1976 Apache Royal pop-up travel trailer from my buddy Martin a couple years or so back. It's got more moving around, storage, and sleeping space plus a mount for a propane tank that feeds a 3-burner stove and interior heater. The missus is much happier with it and she did a bang-up job cleaning it and having curtains made for it. I rebuilt the seating and we replaced all of the sitting and sleeping foam.
The Meat of this Post
I finally got a real weather station, well, at least better than the common house-hold type with a single external sensor. It's an
AcuRite 01536 5-in-1 PWS --
Personal
Weather
Station -- and I have it connected to Weather Underground (www.wunderground.com). It was not a simple decision on where to mount it as there are
specific factors that need consideration for optimal placement and, of course, getting permission from the
Dept. of How The House Looks From The Street officer 😉
Since placement is going to be a compromise with an all-in-one station I spent several hours on the best placement of ours. It finally came down to mounting it against an existing fence post that borders our backyard and asphalt driveway but 20 feet, 8 inches in the air. While I wanted to go 30 feet that would have required guy-wires for stabilization and a lot more engineering effort. As it stands now, using 1 inch black pipe in two 10 foot segments, topped with an 8 inch by 3/4 inch black pipe that the weather station mounts to. This gives the "tower" enough stability to keep from swaying in low wind conditions. We'll see what happens when the winds get above 15mph but until then I'm confident it'll be fine.
The weather station uses 4 AA batteries and I use the remote battery pack to make changes easier. The top fence post bracket is meant to unbolt and the tower itself unscrew from the base, thus allowing me to perform maintenance on the PWS when necessary. The base was generously smeared with grease so the tower pipe won't rust into place and I sprayed the entire tower & power wire with silicone lubricant spray to provide some water-resistance and stink to deter squirrels and other critters from wanting to climb it. Actually, my only real concern is a bird nesting or pooping in the rain catcher 😒
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| 1" black pipe coupler welded to baseplate. |
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| Cement anchors used to mount base plate. |
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| Base plate mounted and ready! |
Below is the adapter. The weather station mounts to it exactly like it would if I used the base mount that it came with. I mounted the weather station, marked the two mounting holes, drilled the holes, and then tapped them so the screws fastened into the 3/4" black pipe. I used Loc-tite small screw thread locker to keep them secured.
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| 1" to 3/4" transition. The weather station mounts to the top. |
Top fence post mount below.
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| Pipe clamp hole drilled and tapped on each end. |
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Alternate holes off-set drilled for mounting to 4x4 fence post. This keeps the screws from hitting each other.
Only three coated deck screws per side are necessary. |
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| How the top fence post mount works. Small screw thread locker used here as well. |
It took over 6 hours to plan, shop, and build the tower with the top fence post bracket taking the largest amount of time since I had to make it. Here it is after my son and I put it up the following morning:
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| Here's the finalized weather station tower. |
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| Works! Up and running since August 20th. |
I'm really happy with this weather station so far and VERY happy to finally have temperature, humidity, barometer, wind speed and direction as it exists at my house, not for some generalized area. I also have a second, remote thermometer and humidity sensor in another room that the weather station display reads.
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| Hmm, 75-F in that room...must be a south-side location. |
