River Gauges
Kayaking enthusiasts wanting to know when a river is at a suitable level have a difficult task. Given the nature of the Irish climate this couldn't be be done using rainfall data alone. Many kayakers have experienced the disappointment of travailing to a river and discovering that despite recent rain, the river is bone dry. The gauge project aims to provide a cheap, reliable solution to this problem.
Relatively cheap home-made river gauges can be built and installed on river banks. These gauges can then send level updates by SMS to a website. The website then displays the information in the form a of a graph.
By publicly posting the the schematics and giving instructions to build the gauges its is hoped that over time a number of gauges will be spread across the country.
History
The entire project was concocted up by Daithí Power, Daithí designed and built the very first gauge and placed it on the Flesk River
The Flesk Gauge web page [1] soon followed. The page provide a graph showing the level of the Flesk for the previous 24hrs.
The project itself was a great success, but the real success came with Daithí publishing the plans of the gauge system and offering advice to people about how to build one of their own.
From there the project migrated to Irishwhitewater.com where several more gauges were added.
