Day 35 - SeeLevel II installation - Part 1

I started the SeeLevel II installation this morning after yesterday’s internet searches. Step one was getting the water pump to work. There are two water pump switches. Power runs to the switch in the wet bay on the common contact. Wires from the other two contacts run up the second pump switch on the monitor panel above the door. The common contact on the second switch powers the water pump. Step two was running power and a ground wire to the panel. The pump indicator light has it’s own wire and I connected it to the common contact of the pump switch. This way the light is on when either pump switch is turned on. The old monitor panel is on the upper right hanging on a screw while I clip test, crimp, and heat shrink each connection.

The white/green wire on the original panel is the propane level sensor according to the document I found on the Internet. It connected to a green wire in the coach. I connected it to the green wire on the SeeLevel II panel which is for the propane sensor. At this point, the water pump works, the battery monitor shows the house battery voltage, and the LPG shows roughly the propane level (79%). It still needs to be calibrated. That will be done the next time the tank is filled. When the tank is full at 80%, the display will read 100%.

Only one blue wire remained to be connected. It goes to the blue wire on all of the tank sensors. I used the freshwater sensor wire, which is red on the coach. I assumed that it ran directly to the existing sensors on the freshwater tank. At the tank, the new sensors were connected to a red and white wire within the wire bundle The white wires on each sensor is connected to chassis ground which happens to be the white wire within the same bundle. The ES sensors are 12” long and are divided into 8 segments. The freshwater tank is 23” high so one segment needed to be cut off of each sensor. A small tab needed to be trimmed off of the top sensor to identify it. There are other tabs to identify the black and grey tanks. No tabs trimmed off is the lower water sensor. Since the total length of two stacked sensors is less than the height of the water tank, I positioned the bottom of the lower sensor about a half-inch above the bottom of the tank to account for the thickness of the tank material. The top is about 2” below the top but with the freshwater tank, the lower half is more important than the top as you want to know when the tank is almost empty. Due to the “L” shape of the tank, there isn’t a linear correlation between the tank percentage and gallons.

With the grey and black tank, the upper part of the tank is more important. I.e. It’s more important to know when they are almost full. You can see the water level in the upper picture and it’s right above where the two sensors meet. The display reads 50%. I have the sensors mounted with gorilla tape to test the system with the door closed. Once the final position has been determined, there is 3M adhesive tape on the sensors for mounting. The directions say to avoid metal within 2” of the face of the sensor. This is difficult with the water tank as there is metal on all of the surfaces of the bay containing the tank. In the picture, you can see that the sensor is not quite 2” away from where the door would contact the gasket. I have the door closed but not bolted shut to test as I still need to run at least one wire over the top of the tanks to the wet bay. That is where the black and grey tank sensors will be located. The minimal configuration needed for the system was to tell the system that I’m using two stacked sensors for the freshwater tank. There is also a diagnostic display that showed a signal level of 96% and 14 segments. The resolution of the system according to the manufacturer is ⅜".

To access the other two tanks, I need to partially disassemble the wet bay as the fiberglass panel blocks access to the tanks. It hit 85°F today I just worked on the freshwater tank as I was able to work under the shade of the awning. No awning on the other side. That will be part 2 of the SeeLevel II installation.