I know that most of you might not think about jumping into an outdoor swimming pool right now, but here in the Southern hemisphere it’s getting warmer and warmer, and I have been busy integrating my old pool into Home Assistant.
If you need some inspiration, please have a look at the following blog posts where I share detailed descriptions of what I have done so far with photos, screenshots and configuration snippets.
Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for more posts to come.
What are your plans for chlorine?
have you considered water flow meter?
thank you for sharing
nicely done bud!
Alright, sneak preview: I am not planning to measure the pool water’s chlorine concentration here, but the level of remaining liquid chlorine in a drum that feeds a chlorinator. I am experimenting with a waterproof ultrasonic sensor.
I have not yet. I haven’t touched the plumbing of the pool yet, but will have to replace two old valves soon, and adding a water flow meter may be a good idea to consider.
I was interested in ph measurements.
I have seen devices that may be used for this by connecting to RasPi,Arduino or esp8266 but looking into them it seems yearly replacement is required. (Not sure if longer term use is possible but at $75USD+ it seemed a new solution required)
Nice ideas.
Lighting?
Very nice. For the pump I just used a GE/Jasco outdoor 240V 40A Zwave switch and did similar automations in HA. Works well.
For the heater I used a zwave dry contact to enable/disable the deadman switch to get a remote" heater on/off" functionality.
I was looking at electronic pH and chlorine concentration meters as well. It appeared that they fall into two categories: industrial expensive ones (>$1000) that would do the job well but are probably not justifiable for a domestic pool, and cheaper ones (<$100) that require calibration before each use (i.e. before taking a single measurement) using reference pH solutions, and hence are not practical for a fixed installation.
Haven’t done that yet, but would probably just go with an off-the-shelf solution like Z-Wave switches or Hue bulbs.
Cool, that would have saved me some time. Unfortunately there is no Australian version available.
Is it just me - or @exxamalte, have you failed to deliver your next subspace article? 
I’m eager to read more!
I wasn’t aware that I was expected to be on a strict schedule. The next article is almost finished - give me a few more days.
Good news, I just published another article - this one shows how I built a water level sensor and how I integrated it into Home Assistant.
Awesome. Bloody awesome!
I just have to figure a way of adding similar sensors to my pool - but my wife imposes very stringent aesthetic requirements. I wonder how I can pull this off…
Thanks for the details writeups mate - they’re great!
No worries, mate.
Yeah, I was thinking for some time on how to mount the sensors, and I think my approach with hiding the sensors in conduits/pipes is already an improvement over just letting them hang in the water. I am not sure if there is waterproof non-toxic paint that could camouflage the enclosures a bit further. Imwas thinking of mounting the temperature sensor in the skimmer but it was too difficult.
Another more advanced option I was contemplating for a while is installing the sensors in a mini floating device that is just swimming in the pool and is powered by batteries and solar panels. The water level sensor would have been pretty challenging in this setup though.
I’ve been considering the idea of dropping my pool level below the minimum, boring a hole in the wall and mounting the PVC piping externally. It would contain the temp sensor and float switches - possibly enough room for an impeller to circulate the water to make sure the water temp is the same as the main pool mass.
I would then fit the outlet with the same covers they use on solar heater intakes, just to tidy it up.
Just not sure how feasible/advisable it is to go and modify the pool wall in a pebblecrete/concrete like that.
The floating idea is where I started - but figured you could only get temp reliably. I have an ALDI floating RF pool thermometer - it would do the job if I just built an RF reader to transmit the result to HA via MQTT. But I’ve noticed that it chews through batteries and it’s not that reliable signal wise…
Anyway - love what you’re doing. The web site you have is great content. Keep going man!
jwelter which brand of zwave dry contact did you use and what brand is your pool heater? I too am going to buy the GE outdoor switch to control the pump but need a solution where i can turn the heat up/down.
And another article in the series has been published this week. Have a look if you are interested in how I measure the remaining liquid chlorine in a drum behind my pool:
Can you elaborate more on how you used dry contacts for your heater? What brand heater do you have and which contacts did you use?
Sorry for slow reply!
I used a Fortress MIMOLite and just use the relay contact it provides set to latched mode and inserted it in line on the heater fireman’s loop. This loop when closed allows the heater to run; and when open stops the heater from running.
The pool control decides when the heater should run or not; but I can over-ride this from HA.
I then made some automations to turn it off at 8pm if it’s on; and if the forecast calls for significant rain/snow/wind.
Are you also controlling the temperature or are you just turning on and off the heat?