Hello,
my original ugly one was built out of ABS. I didn't like the fact that I can't see inside to check how far kalk goes during the stirring. I decided to build one out of acrylic shortly after. It is much bigger than first one and looks way better too. I used extruded one to save money. If you have digital pH meter you may get away with ABS or PVC material since you can use pH measurement as an indicator of kalk depletion either in your tank or in your reactor. However, I still prefer to have visual. For example I used digital timer on stirring pump that failed and didn't turn on my pump on for about 12 hours and I could spot that right the way since I observe my tank at least 2x a day. Other than that I can only see advantages (mostly money saving) when using PVC. I am not sure about oxidation of acrylic thou. I don't use any float switches, float valve or other gizmos. My kalk reactor is connected between RO/DI water storage tank and a fish tank. I have MaxiJet 1200 permanently pushing water to the reactor from the storage. Reactor output, dripping rate, is controlled by valve. It took about week or so to tweak dripping rate to match evaporation rate, but it works well this way for last 6-7 weeks. My stirring pump is connected to timer set for 15min every 4 hours. I am sure you could do this with float valve you just have to make sure that kalk mixture would not find its way back to your water storage tank (it would not be a disaster anyway, as long as you are not connected directly to your RO/DI unit.)
|