A few (many) years ago I setup a 1-wire system around my house to monitor it's temperatures. All the data collected has been logged in to a MySQL database. However only recently have I decided to publish it for all to view. All this has been superseded, I have yet to give a description of the new system.
The following image is the Linux server and the computer systems UPS. A UPS is a must in Copthorne! Not a pretty case but it does the job. As it's housed in the garage, it needs to be vacuumed out regularly, spiders seem to enjoy living in there! The server is on the left of the picture and the UPS is on the right, which is an APC 2200.
The monitoring system is based around a 1-wire system, same type of network as the weather station. It is biased around two 1-wire masters. An Ethernet biased 1-wire master, HA7Net and a USB device connected to my Linux server (Fedora 11), The Linux server tends to run whatever is the latest version of Fedora!
The Ha7Net is located in the airing cupboard, see the following image.
The 1-wire temperature sensors have been attached to the network by a RJ45 couplers. I have made a good few of these now, although a little fiddly, as the wires within the coupler are not very long. But with some care it's not to difficult and produces a neat and easy to replace module, see the following image.
To measure the temperature of the water in the pipes, the closest I could do was to tie-wrap the sensor to the pipe, being that the pipe is made out of copper the temperature of the water must be very close to the temperature of the pipe.
I have also put a sensor in the Fish Tank, however I do not have an image of this. The main issue here was ensuring that the silicone sealant would not affect the fish, I used the sealant that can be brought from any good fish shop, do not use sealant from a DIY store, you will kill your fish!