Knowledge Base

Often on site there maybe circumstances where you cannot use the same Inclinometer that you would normally. This could be due to scheduled servicing of your system or a system moving site amongst other reasons. There are many tolerances when making inclinometers and no two inclinometers will be identical. Tolerances in wheel alignment, cable marker distances, sensor positions all contribute to small differences in readings between each Soil Instruments system. With this in mind our general recommendation is not to switch between Inclinometer units half way through a monitoring project. Good practice on a safety critical monitoring sites is to have a second inclinometer system in reserve. The backup system will have had a commissioning set of readings recorded at the same time as the primary Inclinometer system.

Not everything always goes to plan and sometimes customers have no choice but to use an Inclinometer system that has not been commissioned. When presented with a situation such as this it is recommended, if possible, to take readings with your original system followed by an immediate reading with your new system. This allows the user to see the difference between the two systems.  

If the user is aware that they may need to switch systems at some point, the user should record base readings with both systems. When the user then needs to switch to the second system they will be able to continue readings with second system and will also be able to use the second systems base reading, giving confidence that there is no inaccuracy due to using the wrong base reading.

If however, the user has to switch regularly between two systems for readings (which is not recommended) the user has the option to record base readings with both systems, then using the “averaging survey” function within Soil Instruments In-Site software, the user can create a single base reading from both systems. This will give an average base reading which will average the difference between the two systems.

Although monitoring of deep boreholes can be time consuming, you can never have too many readings. Soil Instruments will happily review readings with our customers and offer advice where possible.