Everything Automated water movement, please help

[boogiesnap]

Automated water everything, please help!

I’m fixing to automate water changes, ATO refill, and kalk reservoir…but am having difficulties with the physics and engineering.

With a rodi unit and a booster buddy direct plumbed into my water main and waste into a drain.

I’d like to automatically fill(and STOP, lol)three separate containers.
One 10 gallon for saltwater and auto water change. Might go with the auto aqua lite, might go hydros. Not really germain to the question at hand though I don’t think…unless I used the hydros water sensor direct to the tank for ATO. But anyway.
One 5 gallon fresh top off water
And
One 5 gallon container for dosing kalk.

I’d like these to fill automatically with rodi water when empty.
So say after the last water change of the of the week, the 10 gallon is empty(scheduled for say Sunday), it automatically refills and I dump in salt. Same with the kalk container.

Is there a combination of floats/solenoids, gravity inlet/outlets that could facilitate this madness?

Or am I better off just teeing the rodi line with a valve for each container and turning the valve on/off as needed.

 

[Quietman]

Sounds like a fun project. There are many solutions to this and I'm not going to go into all the design options, just get out the pen and paper and start working out what you want to do and how to do it and minimize risk of water going where you don't want it (like the floor). A few general recommendations - always have a mechanical float to back up a solenoid (they usually fail shut and don't fail too often in RODI water, but backups are nice). I would tend to go with just auto filling one storage container from the RODI unit and then distribute that water via a pump or better yet, gravity with solenoid timers/float valves. Minimize number of electrical mechanical failure points. One master solenoid once a week (if tanks sized right) could do fine. Also, flood alarms would be recommended that triggers auto shut off for supply. Make sure everything is set to fail in the shut or a protected condition. Just a few off top of my head. Good luck!

 

[Joe31415]

I’d like these to fill automatically with rodi water when empty.

You do, but you shouldn't.
IMO, it's very important to have some type of break in your system between the tank and the main water supply. If your AWC fill pump or ATO gets stuck on, you don't want it to have an unlimited supply of water. It'll be bad enough if it empties an entire reservoir into the system. It'll be monumentally worse if it's able to run and run and run all day.

Having said that, what you want to accomplish is doable. Some water level sensors and relays should make easy work of it.

 

[Kershaw]

I’m in the process of automating water changes and ATO. I am using GHL and hydros to do it. I built a water mixing station in a plastic shed with 2 55gal drums. One with ro and one with saltwater.

Currently the GHL maxi 2.2 is doing the AWC. I will be adding multiple safety’s as time goes on. The GHl has its own safety’s that can be added but I want redundancy so it pluged into the hydros so if the GHL sensors fail hopefully the hydros sensors will kick in.

For the ATO I will be using another dosing pump to pump water from mixing station into a 5gal Resivor under my tank with tunze osmolator 3. So sensors on the hydros and the tunzes built in sensor.

I do intend to run 3/4 pvc lines under my house to tank at some point so I can do quick water changes in emergency situations.

 

[boogiesnap]

Sounds like a fun project. There are many solutions to this and I'm not going to go into all the design options, just get out the pen and paper and start working out what you want to do and how to do it and minimize risk of water going where you don't want it (like the floor). A few general recommendations - always have a mechanical float to back up a solenoid (they usually fail shut and don't fail too often in RODI water, but backups are nice). I would tend to go with just auto filling one storage container from the RODI unit and then distribute that water via a pump or better yet, gravity with solenoid timers/float valves. Minimize number of electrical mechanical failure points. One master solenoid once a week (if tanks sized right) could do fine. Also, flood alarms would be recommended that triggers auto shut off for supply. Make sure everything is set to fail in the shut or a protected condition. Just a few off top of my head. Good luck!

Thank you quietman, that’s what I’ve done, paper and pencil and diagrams, but I get lost with all the start/stops/gravity feeds, yada yada.
All good advice I will heed though. Very much appreciated.

 

[Joe31415]

I’m in the process of automating water changes and ATO.

I have a hydros but I'm only using it to drive a wavemaker, however, I set up my AWC to work similarly to how theirs did.

I used:
2 (dumb) pumps, I use BRS dosing pumps.
3 Kasa smart outlets
1 Water Level sensor
Misc parts to connect everything

The Kasa outlets go on each of the dosing pumps and your ATO.
Very basically, at a specific time, you shut off the ATO and turn on the drain pump. When the correct amount of water has been drained, the drain pump is shut off and the fill pump is turned on for the same amount of time. When that's done, the fill pump shuts off and the ATO is turned back on.

In one of my tanks, I have two versa pumps (with their own schedules) handling this. I have the fill pump run, then the drain pump. I know it technically means I'm removing some of the new water, but it also means leaving the ATO out of the equation as it's sensor remains submerged the entire time.

Getting back to this system, it drains, then fills, necessitating the ATO being turned off. In addition, I also added the water level sensor. The water level sensor cuts power to the fill pump. So, instead of, say, draining for 1 hour then filling for one hour and hoping for the best, which won't always happen with a dumb dosing pump*, I'll tell it to, for example, drain for 1 hour, then fill for 2 hours. As soon as the water hits the sensor, it stops filling.


*the versas on my other tank use stepper motors and can be calibrated.