This leter is from Toutouche a friend of mine who have came here and copy my float swich set up since he is a lot beter in english than me you will understand better is writing. he change on ting in the design and if you go that way be very carefull to do some maintenance. he take elastic to fix the mercury switch to the plexiglass arm but I have permanently glue it on because elastique could fail at the long run and if they fail good by the reef and welcom the flood
one other ting to be very careful is the siphon efect test your final setup carefuly befrore to put kalk in because empty the content of a reactor
at once will not be very good for your reef!
read this link please so in case it happen you will know wath to do
http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin...highlight=drop
From toutouche:
O.k. Here it goes, and I apologise for the length this is going to be. Hope I explain it clearly. The set-up uses the following parts. A Spectrapure RO unit. A Visio Kalk-mixer that I put together with parts brought to me by a friend from France that you can see at their website
www.mars.reefkeepers.net. Even though I got my parts from there, they have detailed instructions about how it is put together and what it consists of so you could easily build it from parts bought in your area. Other parts are an old type of mercury switch that you can get from an appliance repair shop. These are the old fashion switches that used to be on washing machine top doors that would shut-off the machine when the top would be opened. I got 3 used ones for $4.00. Also and this Is one part I bought new. A water supply valve for a Maytag dishwasher. I use the Maytag type because they have a safety feature that other types don't have which is 2 electric solenoids to shut the water off, for the 1 inlet and outlet. I also use a HD type timer that has 24 on/off settings, a 1/4 turn small brass ball type shut-off type tap that I can solder to my house 1/2" plumbing, some wire and a 120v. plug, and a good ol' all plastic ball type toilet float. The reason I use this is it is very cheap and the size of the ball exerts a lot of force while floating because of it's size. This way even if there is some salt building up on the hinge part, the ball has enough strength to not let it stick. Although the way my set-up works, I have no salt building up at all. Now the way it is all hooked up is this. I have the tap hardplumbed into my house 1/2" copper water pipes with a male adapter at the output. On this I screwed the electric solenoid, which then is connected to the RO unit intake. The RO output is connected to the input on the Visio Kalk-mixer, and the waste-line is fixed to drip into my plastic utility type sink as the whole filter setup is in the basement in my laundry room. From this another tube exits and is attached to my sump just above the water-line. Now, for the switch what I've done is made a swing type arm from plexiglass that attaches to my sump ( a glass aquarium), and at the end of the arm I attached the ball float. I then took the mercury switch and wired it to the end of a wire, slipped soft airline tubing over the wires, and placed it in a small piece of hard plastic tubing which I then filled entirely with epoxy to seal and waterproof it. Before permanently sealing it in I verified and marked the plastic case for the upwards facing side of the switch ( this can be verified with an ohmmeter and moving it around). I also made sure the airline tubing was well seated in the epoxy so water will not leak in over time. I then took a regular plug and spliced it in series into the wire near where it is plugged into an outlet. The other end of the wire is soldered to the contacts on the 2 solenoids. The mercury switch is attached to the swing arm by a couple of thick elastics above the water-line. The elastics were used because it makes it very easy to move the switch up or down to fine tune it. The ball valve is placed and adjusted so when it floats on the water the swing arm and switch are level, and when the water evaporates the ball float will go down a bit and the switch will make contact and close the electric circuit which in turn activates the 2 solenoids to open and let water enter the RO unit. As the water flows it pushes water out of the kalk-mixer to drip into the sump, and that's it. It is simple and works like a charm for me and another friend who has an exact same setup for a very long time without ever having to adjust anything after the initial setup. I had made a mark in the beginning with a marker on my sump glass and the water level hasn't fluctuated by even a 1/4". The only thing I ever do is add the kalk powder. The timer is used for a little Rena pump that is hooked up to the kalkmixer which circulates the water internally to mix the powder. I have it programmed to go on 7 times in a 24 hour period for 10 minutes each. This will vary according to what concentration of kalk you need for your tank. Does this explain it well enough?
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IMO this set up guy is the saffer you could have. The selenoy is double for more safety and are built to last very long time and for the mercury switch it could run forever there absolutly no fearlure possible in that switch
[ 28 September 2002, 08:45: Message edited by: stephane ]