So I've been thinking about future planning for automation as I travel periodically for a couple weeks at a time for work. I'm fairly confident that I'll be using Kalk for calcium/alk replenishment as I have past experience using that to some level of success. Mixing every couple days by hand isn't necessarily time consuming but it's not the schedule I want to rely on longer term. I already have my RODI plumbed to my mixing station and it has a float valve that's tied in to a solenoid that can shut off the water and the booster pump. I typically make water in large batches so I also have a manual shut off valve for that in place to avoid TDS creep on my membrane. I'm thinking I want to T off from there and fill a 20 gallon ATO reservoir that will then feed a non-pressurized kalk reactor (avast) that then tops off my sump.
For mitigating risk I would plumb in another float valve as it adds another level of control (another solenoid, time out functions etc). Feeding the ATO storage thru the float valve it could also initiate a shut down of my RODI unit and booster pump using the existing setup I already have. Using a Tunze 3155 with the solenoid option rather than the pump I can then fill from a low water level state, say 2-4 gallons which would eliminate constant on/off with my RODI unit. Feeding the kalk reactor avoids having to run that caustic solution thru my top off pumps etc. Obviously this will require another ATO control to fill my sump but I'm ok with that as I would configure the same level of redundancy to the sump as I have the ATO reservoir.
I also theorized one more level of risk mitigation by having an emergency overflow bulkhead installed that I would then plumb to my floor drain in both the ATO storage unit and the sump. This would 100% protect my floors as in the unlikely event everything fails in the open position, all that happens is i waste water into the drain and not my floor. If the sump ended up getting over filled (you hear about that often enough) it would end up reducing salinity for sure or overdosing kalk, but again, no destroyed house. This made me realize there isn't really an ATO reservoir out there that I want for this configuration. Since Bashsea is already making my sump I thought why not get a custom made to my specification matching ATO reservoir? They put out a Smart Series 10 gallon and I somewhat used that as a starting point. The kalk reactor would sit right on top of the unit and the height would be perfect for gravity feeding the kalk/top off water. This config would not suffer the usual siphon issues most ATO's run into, so that's just another added bonus.
So am I crazy?
