Those who have been following this blog will have noticed that the weather widget in the bottom right corner has been stuck in March. This was due to a combination of animal factors. One being a rodent eating through cables and the other being an alpaca that got caught in the cables and tipped over the old weather station, ripping the rest of the cables and breaking several of the sensors.
With time being taken up with other issues, it has taken a while to get around to fixing it. As it turns out it was cheaper and easier to buy a new weather station kit than the individual components. So we needed to work out a better place (to avoid alpaca induced failure) and closer to the computer so we didn't have long cable runs (to avoid transmission problems, and rodent induced failures).
The old system, basically the stand sat in the paddock to the back of the house.
First step was to dismantle the old stand to reuse as many components as possible. If you look closely at the weather vane you can see the attempt to fix it - the yellow insulating tape. Needless to say it wasn't a huge success.
To allow me to fix the mounting pole onto the top of the pergola I decided to use a piece of scrap metal strapping. This stuff has been invaluable, and certainly far more worth than the few dollars I spent on several lengths of it at a local second-hand yard. This was what was left over from several projects, including a pipe layer, a repair of a ripper, building of a gas bottle trolley, a modification to a tow bar accessory for the tractor and a few other things I can't remember. Not bad for $4.
You can see the pilot hole on the left and a finished mounting hole on the right. I ended up bevelling the edge of the hole to allow a countersunk bugle screw to be used to secure it.
After a bit of cutting and welding we have the finished mounting platform, painted with rust-inhibiting paint. The wooden platform for the rain guage I sanded back and painted with some waterproof silicone - mainly because I had some handy.
The rain sensor drops the water through the base of the sensor, so needs to be mounted such that the water is allowed to flow away. Here I've mounted it across the platform so the water has a clear path below the sensor. This is the sensor without its collecting cover in place, showing the see-saw like mechanism used for measuring the amount of water falling.
The unit installed in its new (hopefully less animal prone) location. The cables then run to the transmitter which also includes the temperature and humidity sensor.
Interestingly both the old console and the new console are both reading the data from the sensors via the wireless link, so we have the ability to check the inside and outside tempratures at either end of the house, and of course by checking our blog 
