Protimeter Hygrotrac Remote Monitoring System

This is something I would be very interested in for our barn conversion. The link doesn't seem to work at the moment, are there more details?

It's working now thanks Emma

It's an appealing-sounding idea but is it cost effective? Each remote sensor has a wireless interface and presumably a battery. What do they cost? And the presence of the batteries means they can't be built-in unless there's some way to access them. Compare that with something like a 1-wire system, which is a bit more effort to install but then can be left to its own devices and is cheap enough to embed extra, spare sensors.

How are the wood moisture meters that are shown intended to be used? They don't look like they'd be reliable in thelong term if left in place pressed aginst a beam and indeed don't seem to be designed for easy mounting. So are they intended to be carried around to test exposed timbers? In which case, I'd say the wireless interface brings only a marginal advantage over a normal moisture meter.

It's an appealing-sounding idea but is it cost effective? Each remote sensor has a wireless interface and presumably a battery. What do they cost? And the presence of the batteries means they can't be built-in unless there's some way to access them. Compare that with something like a 1-wire system, which is a bit more effort to install but then can be left to its own devices and is cheap enough to embed extra, spare sensors.

How are the wood moisture meters that are shown intended to be used? They don't look like they'd be reliable in thelong term if left in place pressed aginst a beam and indeed don't seem to be designed for easy mounting. So are they intended to be carried around to test exposed timbers? In which case, I'd say the wireless interface brings only a marginal advantage over a normal moisture meter.

I've looked at the documentation and would agree with the above. Its does have pros and cons. The web based reporting functions are very good. However, even with the AECB discount the proposal is a bit expensive for me.

Does anyone know of a less expensive wired system?

I think defining the requirements a bit closer would be useful.

Is this for temporary use in a building or permanent installation?

What is to be measured? Temperature, humidity, moisture, CO2, wind speed, insolation, electrical appliance consumption, water consumption, door openings etc.

What size of building? I doubt the same solution is likely to be appropriate for both a single dwelling and an airport terminal.

To what extent is low cost permitted to be achieved by DIY construction, installation and operation?

Are any standards required to be followed for the measurements?

OUr webmaster is looking into the potential of the low cost raspberry computer…but we all need to get stuck in to identify the best affordable solution – then AECB could see if we can get a deal for that as well.

There's been quite a lot of discussion of this topic on both the Navitron and the Green Building forums. It's well worth looking at the sources of kit and the systems people have built.

Thanks for the link to your presentation.

Sorry, I've only just noticed your April 3 post Andy. The forum didn't flag it up as new for some reason. It's difficult to read the graphs in the report “Hygrotrac sensor issue intro note inc.pdf”, and the abbreviations aren't explained – who wrote that by the way?

But the results look a bit strange to me. Normally I'd expect the RH to vary more than the absolute humidity (AH?), since the latter requires the physical movement of water molecules, whilst the latter is just a calculation. So I think reading any meaning into a wildly changing AH value reverse-calculated from an almost constant RH needs to be treated with buckets of caution. I'd love to see the temperature graph as well, for starters.

I'll allow that the presence of the wood is going to affect things by its hygroscopic nature, so maybe that is all we're seeing. But there's no data there that indicates what is driving the changes in AH, as far as I can tell.