Steve W. wrote:
vey wrote:
Steve W. wrote:
Looking for a way to activate a small lamp to show when a remote
mounted water pump is running. I know I have seen the method before
but my dusty brain cannot seem to find it. The pump is a 120volt unit
mounted in a remote pump house out of visual range or I would wire a
light across the pressure switch. I was thinking of something like an
inductive coil around the hot lead feeding a circuit that would power
the light. No problem working on the panel end. Ideas?



Maybe I am stupid, but couldn't you just wire a 120 lamp cord and bulb
in parallel with the pump? You would do this at the switch. When the
pressure switch closed, then the pump and the bulb would come on.

Or you could wire in after the controller box, if you have one.

But make sure that this really is a 120 pump. Most are 240 and then
you would wire one hot to one side of the bulb and neutral to the
other side of the bulb.


Not stupid and I could do that BUT The pump itself is almost 200 feet
away down over a bank in a pump house. I am hoping to be able to connect
something inside the house on the feed to the pump to tell me when it is
operating, rather than burying a lot more wire.

If I had a transformer here that could handle the 15 amps I would hook
one side of it into the hot side of the feed and use it to power a light
since current/voltage would only be flowing when the pump was on but
that would be a good sized transformer. I think my current course of
action will be to wrap a section of the hot side through a toroidal core
with a larger section of magnet wire and see what I get voltage wise.
Kind of a crossbreed current transformer.

Could you put an ammeter inline with the circuit? It would take a
sizeable shunt. There is a place in my city that sells used and surplus
electronics. They have AC ammeters for $15(?).