suggestions for top off system

[bconn]

Hello,

Wanted to inquire with the board on how people have successfuly dealt with seting up a method for top off on their sump. The first phase of the system we are putting in will be approximately 350 gallon. I am not sure yet what the daily water loss will turn out to be. This may take me some time to figure out.

What have others done will and is there any lessons learned on what we should avoid.

Thank you very much in advance for any help or suggestions.

Bill

[MikeNapoli]

For my 120. I have a 10gallon RO reserve in a closet by my tank and I got a double switch and a maxijet pump and it does all the work for me. I fill my reserve tank maybe 1 to 2 times per week. I also add my calcium and other suppliments in the water and it adds it to my tank over the corse of the week which is an added bonus not to remember when or how often I have to dose.

For your way larger system I would get (depending on the room you have) a 44 gallon rubbermaid or a 55 gallon AGA tank. Fill it with RO and the double switch goes in your sump. And maybe a maxijet 400 instead of a mini. It's really easy to set up.

I always said the auto top off is one of the best things I got for my tank next to my ACjr.




a double switch from www.autotopoff.com (http://autotopoff.com/products/DS1/index.htm)

A maxijet mini (http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Produc...t=maxijet&Np=1)

[Phyl]

You'll likely lose 5-7g per day, depending... We keep a 55g drum tied into the system. The ATO (ATO link from Mike's post are also what we use) pumps out of that and into the sump (through a Kalk reactor). We use an Aqualifter to move the water. We also keep that on a timer so that the risk of putting too much fresh water into the system is diminished (in the event of abnormal water loss through skimmer or overflow malfunction).

[mladencovic]

Your evaporation depends only on the total surface area of the water, dryness of the air around the tank/sump and how well it is exchanged, and NOT on the volume. Assuming that you have common geometry of the setup, your biggest unknown factor will be the dryness of the air. Depending on the type of the heater/AC/humidifier/dehumidifier you have in your home/apartment, I would guess your loss will be between 2-4 gal per day.

Your top-off system can be done in several ways:

a) Manual. You make a mark on the sump where you want your water level to be and once and twice a day turn on the pump that will pump the FW into sump and fill it to that level. In choosing the level, you have to factor your power outage, so that when all pumps stop working, all water drained into sump will not overfill.

b) Simple automatic. One, or preferably more for redundancy, float switches and simple relay controlling the pump. Float switches are around 8$ and relay around 6$ in Radio Shack. Most float switches have the tendency to fail in the closed position so that is important to double them at least.

c) More complex automatic. One or more float switches connected to some kind of controller. This configuration can give you more control and safety, since switches can be combined with timers which will prevent overfilling in case of float switches failures.

Since the amount of water you will be replacing is very small, any kind of pump will do the trick. It can be any powerhead or even aqualifter (just 10$) if your FW container and the sump are on the same level and close to each other. If you have to pump it across longer distances and/or heights, then, of course you need to use the stronger pump.

... I also add my calcium and other supplements in the water and it adds it to my tank over the corse of the week which is an added bonus not to remember when or how often I have to dose.
...

Napoli, I am not so sure that this is a good idea. For starters I hope you are not dosing both Ca and Alk supplements at the same time. If you are using Kalk, it will react with CO2 and loose its usefulness (that is why Kalk is mixed either only in reactors that have limited access to the air, or in small daily doses that would be used completely). Also, all those trace elements and such will be exposed to oxygen, CO2 and each other for longer period of times before they enter your tank water and may bind in ways that would be useless in the tank. And then, there is a possibility that you might have different amounts of water evaporated during the year. In my tank, I have almost twice as much water evaporated during the winter then there is in the summer. That would make the dosing amounts fluctuate considerably. Just something to think about.

[Phyl]

Mladen, the thing you didn't appear to take into consideration in calculating the evaporation is fall from the main floor into the basement. That's where we saw the HUGE increase in daily evap from under 2g up to 6g. Summer, winter, fall... doesn't seem to matter whether the heat's running or the AC (or neither). We go through roughly 6g.

Bill, another thing to consider is a dehumidifier for the basement. You'll need one down there to take that 6gpd back out of the air and dispose of it.

[mladencovic]

Mladen, the thing you didn't appear to take into consideration in calculating the evaporation is fall from the main floor into the basement. That's where we saw the HUGE increase in daily evap from under 2g up to 6g. Summer, winter, fall... doesn't seem to matter whether the heat's running or the AC (or neither). We go through roughly 6g.

Bill, another thing to consider is a dehumidifier for the basement. You'll need one down there to take that 6gpd back out of the air and dispose of it.

Well, I have said total surface area , so 12' long 2" wide pipe certainly has a lot of water/air surface area (at least half of what my whole tank has). But you are right, that should ceratinly taken into account. Specially since there might be considerable differential in the dryness of the air. Basically air of one dryness (upstairs) enters the pipe and then very humid exits the pipe and has nowhere to go since it is trapped in the basement. If that air was then sent back into your tank room, it would have reduced the evaporation in the pipe. This way, the water is removed from the air by the humidifier in the basement. By the way, since you have such huge circulation of the water, Are you by any chance reusing the water captured by the humidifier? I would certainly put it through some kind of DI filter, just in case, but you might have a great thing there. I wouldn't be surprised if the de-humidifier is actually pulling more water out of the air then you have evaporation from your tank.

[bconn]

Thanks for the information everyone. This gives me a place to start.

Bill

[Carlo]

Don't bother trying to use water from a dehumidifier in a re-cycled manner. It's pulling all kinds of nasty stuff out of the air that's bound to the water.

Carlo

[bconn]

Hi,

Could you review high level approach below for an autotopoff system for my system.

Overview:
Approx 450 gallons saltwater system. I think my daily evaporation will be in the 4-5 gallon range per day. I have several 55 gallon water drums that will be used in the system. One will be used for RO topoff, the other two will be used for saltwater mixing and storage.

Here is what I am looking to accomplish.

RO topoff to sump:
Install a double switch controller inside sump that will activate a feed pump in the RO top off drum when water levels in the sump need to be refilled.

RO Topoff drum:
Install a double switch controller inside RO top off drum that will activate RO unit when water levels need to be refilled. The distance between RO unit and drum is approximately 20 feet. The RO unit will shutoff when high water mark is restored.

RO Unit

Install double solenoid unit to the RO unit that will be controlled by the double switch controller inside the RO topoff drum. The distance between the drum and RO unit is approximately 20 feet. Kalk reactor will be controlled by Aquacontroller for mixing and dosing

Power adapter requirements - Need to wire double solenoid in line.

Does this approach seem to make sense. Please let me know if there are any flaws you can see or if a point has been missed.

Thanks in advance.

[Phyl]

It all made sense until I got to the Kalk reactor. Where is the Kalk reactor tied into? How is it being fed?

For our system instead of pumping directly to the sump, the topoff to the sump goes through the Kalk reactor.

If you don't need so much kalk in your system you may use your Aquacontroller and two separate floats to dose Kalk when the PH is below threshold otherwise use your straight RO (als on a float). This was our original plan, but as it turns out we can use all the help keeping the PH up we can get.

We also had our float on the AC even when it was straight RO. The top off was scheduled to happen 2x a day to reduce the potential of failure if the sump somehow lost water volume (drains failed somewhere along the line because a snail got into it, siphoned out onto the floor when acclimating, you know, the unpredictable stuff).