Water Change Question

[adamfinke]

I'm looking at premixing and storing my saltwater for water changes and was wondering how should I run my RO water to my Rubbermade Storage container? My culligan AC-15 ro unit makes about 15 gallons par day but I only have a sm 3gallon presurized storage tank. I hope this makes sense we use the water for drinking also. I also have a 1/4" top off line to my sump on a float, which works great. My tank is about 30ft from the RO unit and my SW storage. Do I just let the water trickle into my container and use a float valve to shut the water off at 25gallons? Just looking for any tips or tricks with out going broke.

 

[Troylee]

I would get a seperate rodi unit for your tank personally... Those metal storage tanks may cause issues with your tank... Once you have done that yeah a float valve would work great to control it...

 

[Mike&Terry]

We store our RO/DI water in a vat as well. To automate, we made use of dual float switches (one mounted high, the other low). In our design, we decided to minimize the number of times our RO/DI unit must start, opting for infrequent "fill-ups", rather than more frequent "top-offs" to the storage vat. We fabricated acrylic hangers to mount the float switches on and they have work great. We also keep an air stone in the vat to keep the water aerated.

These pics are of our old 40g Brute storage vat, but we're using the same principle with the new one.


A close up of one of the switches mounted to the acrylic hanger:


For top off to our sump, we're using a second dual-float switch ATO controller. It is set up in the traditional manner: the first float switch (normally submerged) signals the top-off pump to activate/de-activate based on sump water level. The second float switch (normally dry - above water level) is the failsafe killswitch to the top-off pump.

This is not the best pic as the Deltec skimmer is blocking view of the first switch, but you get the idea:


Hope this information is of some use to you. :bigsmile:

-Terry

 

[adamfinke]

Thanks for the pictures Terry.

 

[adamfinke]

So what is an acceptable TDS reading??

 

[bluwinghawk]

nice setup and good question? be following

 

[Mike&Terry]

So what is an acceptable TDS reading??

We keep ours at 0. Some folks will let theirs go to 2 or more.

 

[adamfinke]

So I should pick up a meter to measure TDS. I wouldn't think a pressure tank would have any affect on the water quality. I think I would need the psi tank for my auto topoff cause my tank is so far away 30feet from my RO unit. I was thinking of adding on a deionization filter.

 

[FLSharkvictim]

I have two float switches on the fresh water barrel, one towards the top, so kicks off my 5 stage BRS RODI and a Float switch towards the bottom of the barrel so it automatically kicks it on to fill the fresh water barrel back up
I'm sure there are a million different ways to do it but I find this way to be the easiest and most effective way.