FEATURE Sensors
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When Wayne’s water world went digital…
Victorian British industrial history met state-of-the-art 21st-century digitilisation from SICK to deliver a surprising sensing solution high in the windy moors of West Yorkshire
W
ayne Morrison has a surprising sideline alongside his role advising industrial customers all
over the North of England about their choice of SICK sensors: He helps to run a water company. He is one of a handful of volunteers who enable the Henshaw Water storage facility to supply 165 properties in the village of Walsden, near Todmorden, with clean and clear water. But, climate change is putting this historic facility under stress. So, the SICK sales consultant enlisted his colleague Charlie Walker, the company’s UK digital product manager, to make sure a continuous water supply to residents could be maintained. The solution took not just 21st-century know- how, but plenty of 19th-century-style hands-on Northern hard graft.
Historic water facility On the hill that rises steeply above Wayne’s house – one of a row of former co- operative managers’ cottages on Henshaw Road – a water storage tank known locally as “The Lodge” stores water collected via a network of perforated pipes from the marshy moorland at the top of the hill. The Lodge is a stone-lined tank measuring 25 x 5 x 3 metres with a 300,000 litres capacity, constructed by industrialists in the late 19th century to serve the local co-operative and surrounding mills and, later, to provide clean water for the managers and mill workers, too. One of England’s largest private domestic water supplies, Henshaw Water is still run on the non-profi t membership basis. For as long as anyone can remember, it has never run out of water … until now.
Water stress
“The tank only has a capacity to supply the community for about fi ve days,” explains Wayne. “In the late Spring of 2022, we came close to running out of water for the fi rst time.” Yorkshire Water stepped in and
32 February 2024 | Automation View from the moor above Walsden
installed a permanent connection that can be activated in the event of a supply shortage. But, how could the volunteers predict when the level of the tank would drop too low, so the emergency supply could be enabled? The tank levels would need to be continuously monitored. Fortunately, having worked for SICK for 20 years, Wayne knew a thing or two about sensors and the potential to collect digital data outputs, so the volunteers could remotely monitor and interpret the water levels.
“Everything is managed, operated and paid for by the members. So, it was going to be down to us to fi nd a solution to the problem,” Wayne explains.
Digital solution A SICK CFP level sensor was then installed in the tank as well as SICK FTS fl ow meters to monitor the fl ow on the outlet pipe to the village. Charlie installed a digital sensor solution to provide additional data and help the volunteers to manage the water facility. A SICK Telematic Data Collector acts as
a controller for the system in a specially- constructed control unit on top of the tank, powered by a solar panel. It also transmits data to the Cloud via an MQTT
broker provided through the HiveMQ IoT platform. Lee Baldwin from West Yorkshire fi rm PL Controls built the control cabinet at their premises in Halifax. Without power or Wi-Fi up the hill,
Wayne and Charlie also grafted to install solar panels and a wind turbine, together with 150m of cabling. The combined capacity can pull up to 3A. “The system uses SICK Dynamic Data Displays to monitor information, including the temperature of the water, temperature of the sensor, signal quality, sensor heartbeat data, as well as the level,” Charlie explains. “Data collected from the SICK FTS fl ow meters can also be used with the level measurement to calculate any water loss in the system. None of this additional data would be available without a digital system, or even just installing a single sensor with an on-device display.” Thanks to a continuous monitoring solution and a true collaborative eff ort, a 19th-century facility is future-proofed to continue supplying water well into the 21st century – and beyond.
CONTACT:
SICK (UK)
www.sick.co.uk
automationmagazine.co.uk
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