Well, I thought the plumbing was done, but I realized there were a few issues with it. The return pumps can't create their own suction, so going over the top wouldn't work because the pumps would never be primed. This means I needed to drill the sump. I've wanted to avoid doing that because I didn't want to screw it up. But I ended up drilling anyways and I don't think I screwed it up.
I procrastinated fixing the plumbing, mostly because I was plumb'd out and I hate plumbing to begin with. So I moved on to installing the water controller and ATO. I was able to get both set up, but haven't plugged either in yet. The water controller was a bit difficult because the mounting bracket they send you is garbage if you're looking to install it in a large storage container.
Thankfully, I had to 3/4" pipe available. I drilled some holes in that and mounting the brackets onto that pipe. This gave me more distance in between the two float switches. I drilled a hole in one of the storage caps. I made it just large enough in diameter to fit pretty much just the pipe and the cables. This pipe now rests on the bottom of the storage container in a small divot. It keeps it straight and should work fine.
As part of the ATO install, I drilled two holes in the remaining cap from the RO container. I dropped the pump in there and fed the RO line and cords through the holes then screwed on the cap. This should help keep everything in place while reducing evaporation.
Since I now have an endless water supply connected to my RO container, I knew I needed to ensure I had a triple-redundant system to protect my house from flooding. One, I don't know how often I will just leave the water turned on at the pipe. I have the booster pump, but that makes too much noise for me, so it's easier to just turn the whole unit, including the water line off. This might defeat the purpose of the water controller, but kind of not. Then, when I am making water, the water controller should use the two float switches to determine if it needs water or not. If those two sensors fail, then I have a float switch inside the barrel. I also have the pressure switch on the RO/DI unit. I've tested those out and they function properly. Also, I have a gravity-fed overflow drain on the barrel so if all of my backups fail, the water will drain out the side of the barrel down my sink drain. I haven't tested this yet, but will soon. Excuse my caulking job, I didn't have a good angle and just wanted a seal. Note, I used GE Silicone I on this.
Now, with the ATO, I trust that it is a pretty reliable unit, so I felt comfortable with most of the precautions is has in place to prevent flooding (1 float sensor, 1 optical eye, 10 min timer, and an alarm). That being said, I still wanted more. I drilled a hole in the back of the sump and installed another float switch. Since I was connecting my sump to a nearly endless supply of water, I wanted to be extra careful.
I also installed a carbon monoxide and smoke detector in the room. It has a 10-year battery and it can't be changed out. We'll see how long that lasts, but probably not 10 full years.
I needed to finish my install of connecting my skimmer to my CO2 scrubber. I finally got the last connector piece I needed. The CO2 scrubber will also be connected to an electric gate valve. So depending on the pH, it will either open and close to let the skimmer air recirculate through the CO2 scrubber. If it the pH gets too high, it will pull in outside (fish room) air. If the pH is low, it will recirculate the air through the CO2 scrubber. I'm hoping this leads to a higher and more stable pH while also reducing how much CO2 media I'm using.
I had to drill a hole in the top of my auto neck cleaner on the skimmer and install the barbed end. It's not airtight, but I don't think it needs to be since there are a dozen other holes on top already.
On to drilling the sump. I was super nervous to drill the sump to make room for the inlets of the return pumps. In the end, it wasn't as big of a deal as I was thinking and the holes came out fine. I haven't put water through them, so who knows, they might really suck. But they look like they will hold. I also glued in a strainer on each bulkhead. I don't need a snail messing up my return pumps.
Then I connected my return pumps to the sump. I used the braided nylon tubes because I want to try to cut down on vibration noise. We'll see if that actually works. This is also where I had to reconfigure some of the pipe from the return pump back up through the UV sterilizers. The good news is, I was able to cut out all of the 90* angles from the inlets and even one 90* angle on one of the outlets.
My other main concern with my setup is that I will have about 185 gallons up top in the DT and I have a ton of piping throughout. My concern here was that there would be so much water in the system that if my power went out or if I otherwise turned off the return pumps, my sump wouldn't be able to hold all of the water. This is only a concern, I haven't tested any of this yet. Either way, since I have so much water in the system and a relatively small sump as well as a limitless supply of water connected to my sump, I needed some other kind of safety mechanism.
I drilled another hole in the back of my sump in the skimmer chamber. I put in a bulkhead and use some of my extra 1" piping to create a gravity-fed overflow down to my utility sink. This should help prevent my sump from ever overflowing. With this installed, by next concern is that I don't want this overflow to be activated after every time I turn off my return pumps. That would be a lot of wasted saltwater. But I won't really know how it all performs until I start throwing water through the system, but that's when I can fine-tune everything...hopefully.
A few other things I worked on was installing check valves on each of my return pumps. I know ahead of time that these things don't work great. Water will still leak through, but hopefully, these valves will hold at least some of the water in the pipes and not in my sump. This should prevent some of the need to use that emergency sump overflow and save me some saltwater. I never want to have to rely solely on these check valves, but they should help out a little bit.
I also performed a leak test on both of my UV sterilizers. They seemed to pass according to what I know. So I installed the bulbs and ran the wires around. When it comes time to change out those bulbs, there's no getting around it. It will be a pain in the butt. I will likely need to remove the entire unit, but I'm mentally preparing myself for that now.
So, with all of the changes and progress, here is what it all looks like now. I'm pretty happy with it. Happy with it enough that I've started to set up my first QT. I've made about 50 gallons of saltwater and have another 55 gallons of RO water at the ready. My tank has also been ordered, but I don't have an ETA on that. I will likely be performing the hybrid TTM that
@Humblefish innovated. Then, my little fishes can live in a larger observation tank until I feel comfortable with the status of the DT (whenever that comes in and is ready). So these fish could be living in an observation tank for quite some time. But I only plan on getting very small fish for now.
Up next, I think I will begin mounting all of the electronics and figuring out my electrical control plan. I'm a bit nervous for that since I have a lot of things that all need to be plugged in and ideally controlled/monitored by my Apex. But I'm starting to doubt if 2 20a circuits is enough...
