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Mixing Station Setup help

kinetic

kinetic

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I'm going to be using a space that's approximately 35" wide, 90" tall, and maybe 36" deep to house a small mixing station. I'm thinking of just using some kind of dosing pump to change the water rather than lugging buckets or even using some regular pumps so that it's a lot more accurate. Anyway, was wondering if I could get some expert help.
The tanks will be stacked, top will always be filled with RODI (except when I empty it into the bottom via a valve).

Top Tank:
  • Filled from RODI unit, always kept topped off
  • Backpressure will stop the BRS RODI 5-stage with it's auto shutoff valve
  • One outlet at the bottom connected to the bottom tank
  • A "just in case" fitting with ball valve to empty it out into buckets if needed
Bottom Tank:
  • Will have a small pump inside to mix (or should I have an external?)
  • Opening of some sort to add salt (need some suggestions here)
  • Then one small hole for the Kamoer to pull from
  • A "just in case" fitting with ball valve to empty it out into buckets if needed
I'll be running the Kamoer 1/4" lines under the house to the sump (10' or so) and setting them to change water as quickly as possible (rather than throughout a week). The idea is just to make my weekly water changes easy.

Process:
  1. release water from top to bottom tank
  2. add salt mix to the bottom tank
  3. After checking salinity, start the Kamoer to finish changing water as quickly as possible (about 63 minutes to change 15 gallons based on it's 900mL/hour rate). I guess I can set the tank to feed mode for 70 minutes to be safe (no ATO, no return). My sump should be able to drain 15 gallons in one chamber.
The Kamoer might be a bad idea. Should I just get an external mixing pump that can also pump all the way to the tank? Maybe the return pump on the tank can have a valve to drain it as well?

Here's the space looking at it from the front. I would prop the two 20G tanks with the longest 30" edge being the height since I have a lot of vertical space.

Water Mixing Station.jpg
 
Remember that you have to clean the salt mixing tank.
Your setup makes it look difficult.

What I did is TEE off my RODI.
One leg goes to RODI as normal, with a float valve.
The back pressure auto-shutoff valve is connected to that.
The other leg goes to the salt mixing tank.
It has both a manual valve, and a float valve like the RODI.
To refill salt mixing tank, just open that manual valve and run RODI.
It actually fills both tanks then, but who cares.
The advantage is that it is a simple RO fitting, which is easy to disconnect, and no big pipes or bulkheads.
 
Personally, I would probably get a 7 stage ro unit if you're going to let it run whenever it wants to keep the top tank full. I believe tds creep will kill a mixed bed resin pretty quickly. Could be wrong though.

Looks like you could put those 20g tanks side by side instead of on top of each other. Not sure what the bulkhead situation would be, and you wouldn't be able to gravity fill the salt one. having 20gallons up high kinda scares me. At least strap the tanks to the wall if you're going to do that. Having them side by side would also make cleaning easier, though now that I'm looking again, I wouldn't use those 20g containers... Without a big access hole, those will be a nightmare to clean. Maybe consider something like this https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/horizontal-leg-tank-35-gal?cm_vc=-10005
 
Also, it doesn't appear those tanks have any openings larger than the fittings for 1.5" pvc. Not sure if that is adequate for you.
 
iani said:
Also, it doesn't appear those tanks have any openings larger than the fittings for 1.5" pvc. Not sure if that is adequate for you.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that’s why I was thinking the 16g flat tank that has the 8” opening.

I might just get a 20g brute and just fill that up for a water change, it won’t really be stationary and can be wheeled around to get cleaned.
 
kinetic said:
Yeah, that’s why I was thinking the 16g flat tank that has the 8” opening.

I might just get a 20g brute and just fill that up for a water change, it won’t really be stationary and can be wheeled around to get cleaned.
Click to expand...
When I was planning something similar I was going to have 2 brutes, one on the bottom and another right above on a platform, both easy to remove/clean as needed. Easily detached plumbing. Everybody likes clean installs with small openings and everything closed up and squished in perfectly but this makes cleaning/maintenance/troubleshooting more difficult down the road in my opinion.

Instead I just decided to do fewer water changes and still do it with a rolling brute can, pump, siphon.
 
JVU said:
When I was planning something similar I was going to have 2 brutes, one on the bottom and another right above on a platform, both easy to remove/clean as needed. Easily detached plumbing. Everybody likes clean installs with small openings and everything closed up and squished in perfectly but this makes cleaning/maintenance/troubleshooting more difficult down the road in my opinion.

Instead I just decided to do fewer water changes and still do it with a rolling brute can, pump, siphon.
Click to expand...

Yes totally. I love those beautiful square containers with extremely clean plumbing. I don't have an issue doing weekly water changes, but planning a new system I'm always trying to improve something if I can. But I could be shooting myself in the foot in this case for sure.

I already have a 55G Ace Roto upright container that I already use for RODI that I use to dispense water into buckets for mixing. But if I x3 the water amount that I need to change, it's going to be pretty difficult. I think maybe I'll just get a big brute that'll hold 15G and then run a pump to fill the tank (the tank will be close enough to the mixing area). Maybe I should also get a super long siphon tube as well.

I might still consider running the Kamoer to do the water exchange, or something similar. I just used to have a lot of issues with salinity in my old ELOS 120 when doing a ton of water changes, and since then I've learned to be pretty careful.
 
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CaptainB said:
I was thinking of using these:

Tamco® Utility Tanks | U.S. Plastic Corp.

These enclosed, rectangular tanks have a one-piece, seamless construction and are an excellent choice for many chemical storage applicati...
www.usplastic.com www.usplastic.com

One 20g for salt mixing and two 7g's. One for top off and one for kalk.
Click to expand...
Oh these are nice and not super pricy. Good find! I might use one for an ATO reservoir instead of spending big bucks on a custom acrylic one.
 
Alright, this is what I'm going with for now.
  • 55G Ace RotoMold tank (I already have this, so might as well use it)
  • I'll put two 2x4's across cinder blocks and a piece of plywood on top of that to hold the 55G tank up
  • I have a HDX 27 gallon container that I'll use to mix water. I just pull it out from underneath. Easy to access, easy to clean.
  • Sicce Utility pump to mix and pump 20G of mixed water into the tank via Python No Spill
  • I'll drop an extra 150watt heater I have in there too to mix the water
I'm also going to have a water outlet added to the space and have my RODI mounted here as well. This space is about 9 feet from where the tank will be, so I'm thinking of running all the 1/4" hard RODI plumbing under the floors. I may also mount my chiller here and run two 3/4" Sched 40 PVC pipes under the floor (I'm ripping the floors up anyway) and have the chiller mounted outside. Could even put my UV sterilizer out here too. Heck, could I even just put an ATO reservoir? I just worry that the pumps would have a difficult time sending water (even though the head pressure is about 2 feet at most) through 16 feet of plumbing.

Water Mixing Station.jpg
 
kinetic said:
Oh these are nice and not super pricy. Good find! I might use one for an ATO reservoir instead of spending big bucks on a custom acrylic one.
Click to expand...

I was looking at ato reservoirs before I started exploring a mixing setup and seemed like modular marine had the best price for custom work.

Advanced acrylics has a lot of sizes and free shipping. If an off the peg size works it comes out about the same as the other makers with good quality (although modular makes good stuff too imo)
 
I have my mixing station in my crawl space (on a hill so it goes from 2’ to 7’ high) and ato pumps straight from the big freshwater tank. It’s amazing I never have to refil ato tank under the aquarium.

I used the tunze pump for a while but it burned out, so bought a relay on Amazon and use a big cheap noname submersible pump thru 1/2” tubing now. Works great. I have a float valve on the sump on the inlet of the top off hose as a backup - so if ato malfunctions and water level gets too high in sump water physically can’t be pumped thru ato line into sump. Also have a one way valve on it. Redundancy!
 
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