Powerhead that can live in Kalk solution?

Mickey · Mar 7, 2019

Anyone know of a powerhead that can live in a Kalk solution? I mix up a Kalk solution in a 45 gallon Brute container approximately once a month and currently stir it manually for a little while until saturation. This has worked perfectly. But I'll be traveling a lot over the next year or two so I'm looking to automate this as much as I can. I can use float switches to fill the container with RO when needed, but I want to turn a powerhead on for 5 minutes or so after it's full so I'm looking for a powerhead that might be able to stand up to the harsh high pH conditions.

Any suggestions?

Mickey

Johnson556 · Mar 7, 2019

Why not rig some sort of motor on the lid that stirs the solution similar to a kalk stirrer, I bet a little bit of digging on amazon with some DIY action could make something awesome.

Tell the Bowman's to build it for you, I see you're from Cheshire

Mickey · Mar 8, 2019

Good idea but I need someone to lay it out for me. I can follow DIY directions pretty well but not so good at figuring it all out on my own. I'll do some digging around and see what I can come up with. Open to some suggestions. Maybe a paint stirrer?

jda · Mar 8, 2019

The old Maxijets would work for about a year. Then, the glue would wear out in the impeller. Then i would super glue and and it would last a little bit longer. This is a tough ask for a pump, which you know. I ended up just going saturated so that it only needed stirred once and used a Kangaroo peralistic to get it into the tank.

ca1ore · Mar 9, 2019

I went through a bunch of powerheads before buying the small avast stirrer kit. Works really well. Probably easy enough to make one. Small, low rotation motors are cheap and all you need is some kind of container with a lid and a stir rod and bar. This was a small motor I bought a while back for an abandoned project.

Mickey · Mar 9, 2019

You all have me thinking. I have an old Oceans Motions and I might able to adapt the motor from that. I'll have to investigate.

More background................I've been using a saturated Kalk solution using the 45 gallon Brute container in the basement for many years. I use a Spectrapure Litermeter 3 which is a peristaltic pump to get the Kalk one floor up to the tank. It typically lasts about a month or so, then I refill the barrel with RO/DI water and give it a stir manually with a long length of PVC tubing. I also have a second 15 gallon "backup" barrel that I've been using to cover the Kalk dosing while the main barrel gets refilled and settled. There's a 3-way manual ball valve that I turn to switch between the barrels. The only reason I'm looking to automate the "refill" tasks is because I've got a lot of travel coming up in the next couple of years and I'd rather be able to control things more remotely rather than rely on a tank sitter. Just about everything else is already controlled by my Apex controller. I've found that the more I need the tank sitter to do, the greater the chance of something going wrong.

My other thought is to look into an electronic 3-way ball valve but last time I checked on those (which was quite a long time ago) they were very expensive.