Currently the WaterMate system detects "low water" using pump current drain. When it's pumping water, it's pulling more current than when it's pumping air. This is an established technique, and works well in almost all cases ... but due to different irrigation setups, there's sometimes a fairly long period during priming where the pump is pulling air.

To deal with this, you can set the "priming time" before the system reports low water. Sometimes the priming time is exceeded and the pump pulls air for a bit longer, and a low water alert is triggered when there's still water in the tank. Using this technique, a "low water" alert can also be triggered when a Pro pump stops due to high pressure cut-out.

For these reasons, we don't turn off the pump when a low water alert is triggered. It needs to keep running to pull air through, or to keep the pressure on while a soak hose drains, for example.

The Pro pump is fine running dry for up to 10 minutes, so it's not really a problem.

If you want to stop the pump running when water is low, or you want your low water alert to be 100% reliable, you can use a hardware tank level sensor. This is something we are developing at the moment. It sticks on the side of the tank and senses water level above/below the attachment point.

If you would like to trial one, let me know. Compatible with all WaterMates, and available end July.

Yes please I like the sound of that, is it submerged or does it have a sensing probe/s

Regards Paul

It's an external sensor which sits on the outside of the tank and senses through the plastic.