I had a crazy day on Friday putting all of the pieces together for my new black water setup, in preparation for a 4-day camping trip the next day. At 5pm I was happy with it all, and filled the tank with water for its water test… unfortunately it failed miserably at a glued joint!! I didn’t have time to fix it up before the trip, so it was one more camping trip without the bathroom – luckily the campground we were at had very nice facilities, so we weren’t put out too much.
One part of the system that did work was the SeeLevel II tank monitor. It provides fullness levels for all of my tanks in percentages, giving a much clearer picture of where I’m at with each tank:
It uses electrical sensors on the outside of each tank, so there’s nothing to get gummed up:
There’s also a wire for a propane readout, that works with electrical senders. After spending a bunch of time online trying to find out how to fit an electrical sender to our propane tank, I went outside to see what model of gauge is installed. Lo and behold, an electrical sender is already fitted to the gauge! So it’s just a matter of running a wire from the panel to the tank, and a ground from the tank to the frame.
What did it cost? Where did you install the readout? The useless black water display location? Where & how did you run the wires?
thanks!
All good questions! I’ll write up another post with more details, but:
– Cost was $170 from Dyers RV online.
– I installed the readout in place of the black water display. The cutout didn’t need to be changed, but I did need to drill new screw holes. The new display covers 2 of the existing holes, but 2 remain uncovered and will need to be filled.
– I re-used the wires from the black water tank. I’ll describe it better in the post, but I tied the display and the sensors’ ground wires to the existing ground, and the sensors’ hot wires to one of the other 3 wires in the bundle. There was an existing 12V wire for the old display, which I re-used for the new display.
I’ll try and write up the details tomorrow. Thanks for reading!
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Hi Mike-
Did you ever hook up to the propane tank? I’m quite interested in this digital gauge — primarily if it would indicate how much propane I had left. I’ve already replaced the freshwater sensor with the stainless version, but more precision would be nice.
Joe-
Sorry for the delay, Joe – I’ve been camping 🙂
I never did hook it up to the tank. Theoretically it should show you how much is left in the tank… I guess it depends on how accurate the sender is. I’d assume just as accurate as the visual gauge?
Best of luck,
Mike.
Hi Mike-
I just got back from a 5-wk trip to the Canadian Rockies. Just checked your blog, and found your reply.
How can I tell that the LP tank on my Westy has a ‘sender’?
Joe-
Hey Joe! Hope you had an awesome trip.
If your tank is anything like mine was, it has a little circular visual gauge on the side of the tank. There’s a little wire coming out of that gauge, probably looped around on itself and tied off. Pretty sure that you’d just extend that wire to the digital readout in order to get propane readings on the SeeLevel.
Cheers,
Mike.
Hi Mike-
Thanks for the quick reply.
The gauge for my LP tank fell off about an year ago. It was nearly worthless, so I haven’t really missed it. I just went and looked at the LP tank on my Westy. If I remember correctly, the gauge used to be at the end of the fixture/outlet to the left of the “Fill” port? I could find no trace of a wire on that outlet, or any of the others on the tank. So, I guess our Westy’s tanks are not identical?
The Westy was an ideal camper for the Canadian Rockies, especially since it rained nearly every night.
Thanks,
Joe-
Hey Joe – I think the wire was attached to the gauge. I sold my Westy a few months ago, so I can’t go out and check the model of the gauge, I’m afraid! It may have been something like this: http://www.rvplus.com/manchester-tank-remote-snap-on-sender-g12846.html
Hi Mike-
Thanks for the reply — and for looking up a link to an LP gauge. I’ll need to look at someone’s Westy to see what kind of gauge they have.
Given that my old gauge, that fell off, was so unreliable, relaying this unreliable signal to a digital monitor doesn’t seem too valuable.
Sorry to hear that you are no longer a Westy owner. Your blog was both interesting and useful.
Joe-