3 replies to this topic

[Snaxmuppet]

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday I bought a Davis Vantage Vue weather station. Although I have been interested in weather for many years it is my first station. I was waiting until I could afford a Vantage Pro2 but got fed up waiting!!!

It was dead easy to set up and just to get it working I have mounted it on a 7ft pole, cable tied to my garden fence. I know that is not a secure enough for a permanent mounting but there is no strong winds in the next few days so it will do for now.

It is not a good position for wind. It is surrounded by houses and ideally I would mount it on my roof but being an integrated ISS I want to have easy access to it. Sticking on a chimney mount on the roof would be great for the data but when I need access to it (battery replacement, clearing blocked rain cup etc) I would need to pay someone to get it down. Not good.

Anyone have any ideas?

I don't have sufficient space (not cash really) for a proper guideline secured pole of sufficient height and mounting anywhere in the garden will render the wind readings pretty useless.

OK, I accept that my situation is not the best for owning a weather station but it is better than nothing and I would prefer to have dodgy wind reading than nothing at all.

Perhaps I could add a Vantage Pro2 wind sensor with WiFi sender if I can find one at a reasonable price used but there isn't much chance of that!

Any advice would be very welcome.

Paul

[4wd]

This is the problem in an enclosed garden-type setting.
If you put it on the roof there will be many mornings when you are thinking the temperature at 4 feet must be much lower than up there.
You'll also need to access it for minor maintenance at least once a year, so don't be sticking it somewhere that is so high you need specialist help or risk an accident trying to do it yourself.

The best compromise is going to be a pole about the height you have it already.
Then you'll get more balanced readings for rain and temp.
If you have it exposed to the prevailing winds usually between south and west it will give reasonable results for wind too, or at least the best you can manage.
On windy days an elevated rain gauge can not catch a significant amount of rain.

[Purplepixii]

Funnily enough I've just come to this thread for a similar reason. A year ago I bought myself a lovely TFA Nexus weather station (thankyou student loan lol) and I paid a satellite/aerial bloke to mount the anemometer on the side of the house which he did. So it's well clear of the roof on a sturdy pole & bracket at the recommended height/position to get proper readings. Great, I thought, I'll get proper readings that wont be affected by gardens/houses etc and all was well for a while...

But then I had to do a reset on my weatherstation console! To do it properly I should have had the anemometer to hand, held it positioned to the north and then done a reset so that the wind direction could be set appropriately but that wasn't possible at the time. That means that for the past few months the recorded wind direction is false and therefore of no use!

So, similar to what Snax said above I am debating my options. Should I just leave it up where it is (in the so-called proper/ideal location) or get it down so that I can get to it and mount it on a long pole fixed at ground level? If I do the latter speeds etc will be moderately affected by surrounding houses/trees

Advice also appreciated please

[Coast]

Either option has it's drawbacks of course. If you know the direction the anemometer is pointing in when the station display is showing the North, you could just 'recalibrate it' so in your own mind, you can see that say NNE is really N and move all the readings around by a few degrees?

Ideally you should get it down, do the reset and then get it re-erected but making sure the North of the anemometer is the North you've set on the weather station - expense obviously getting someone in, but will give the correct results.

I did the long pole thing so I could take it down easily for maintenance etc as required. I know it reads 'light' as it is surrounded by other houses, but a quick check with a hand held unit has revealed how far out it is and I just adjust that by a margin/% when necessary (I'm not recording results or displaying them on the web).