Looking to make my water storage more efficient

[dan3949]

It is not clear that your planned use of the third barrel will increase the volume of water available for a daily water change. I am assuming you need more than one barrel of heated/aged/mixed water for your daily water change. There are 3 steps that take significant time.

1. Make sufficient RO water.
2. Age/areate water for 24 hours
3. Heat water to tank temperature.

Steps 2 and 3 occur simultaneously, take 24 hours, and take place in barrel 1. Thus, only barrel 1 contents are available for a WC each 24 hour period. If the heating is not your "rate limiting step", then the 24 hour aging in either barrel would be. The only way to increase the volume of water available is to utilize 2 barrels for simultaneous heating/aging. Then after 24 hours, the contents of both would be ready for use.

I would recommend the following 3 barrel plan. Use 1 barrel for RODI water storage. Since your RODI system delivers water under a slight pressure, you could install this barrel at a height above barrels 2 and 3. You could use a simple/inexpensive float/cut-off valve on this barrel. This barrel would auto-fill from your RODI system, keeping the barrel full. You could gravity drain RODI water from this barrel into barrels 2 and 3. You could then add sufficient tap water and other additives to barrels 2 and 3, areate and heat for 24 hours. During the 24 hours, your RODI barrel would refill. After the 24 hour age/heating time, the contects of barrels 2 and 3 could be pumped into your tank for your WC. Barrels 2 and 3 would be plumbed together, thus only 1 transfer pump would be needed to pump the water to your tank (unless these barrels are located above your fish tank, allowing gravity draining of these barrels) and the RODI water would be evenly split between the two barrels. Yes this does require two heaters (one for barrel 2 and 3), but if you insulate the barrels, the energy cost is about the same and is dependent only on the quantity of water you are heating.

I thnik this would be the simplest system to build and operate if 1 55 gallon barrel was not sufficient volume for your daily water change. If 55 gallons/day were sufficient, eliminate barrel 3 and only use 2 barrels as described above (i.e. barrel 1 is your RODI storage barrel and barrel 2 is your mix/heat/age barrel).

[frenchie100]

Hi Julie,

I'm not sure I could be of much (if any) help but I wanted to make sure I'm clear at least on what you want to achieve, then maybe I can make a few suggestions.

You are only able to create your mix in one barrel currently, correct? (barrel #1)

And would like barrels #2 and #3 to be your "holding" barrels for the completed mix?

Your issue is that you only want to heat one barrel, however I'm a bit confused on this, as you said you were upgrading to a larger tank, will one barrel of heated mix be enough per water change?

If so, then what is the point of having another barrel to store your mix in? You may have a very valid point to this, it just escapes me with what you've explained so far.

Hi Karen- Sorry if I wasn't clear, it was clear in my head, LOL! My tank acutally turned out to be a 90 gallon. I want to make sure that I always have 90 gallons worth of water ready in case of an emergency where I would need to do 100 % wc. Right now I am using a 55 gallon barrel's worth of water everyday. Hope I am making more sense now!

For the plumbing all 3 together and still maintain individual usage is easy. Drill a bulkhead/Uniseal near the bottom side of each barrel. Plumb a ball valve directly after each bulkhead/Uniseal. Line all 3 barrels up in a line, ball valves facing outwards. The 2 outside barrels glue in a 90 after each valve, each 90 facing each other (both facing towards center barrel). Take the center barrel and glue a cross after that valve. Connect the 90's and cross with pipe so it is one continous section of pipe. On the center barrel, where the cross is glued in, take the outside end (the one not glued) and run pipe from there to where ever you need it.

Using this setup, you can turn each barrel on or off as you need it. Leave all ball valves open and they all fill at the same time/rate. Or just fill 2 barrels at the same time....whatever. The system is very flexible and good for your needs it sounds like. Let me know if my description was too much to follow and I can see about drawing a diagram or something up.

-Ryan

Hey Ryan- Thanks for the description and diagram. They are awesome! So now my questions :

- What is a 90?

-What source of power would I use to get the water to go from one barrel to the next instead of the water equalizing between the two barrels?

-So my center barrel would be the one I would use to fill my tank?

-How would that work with the whole aging/mixing of my barrels?

Thank you so much. I hope my questions make sense!

I tried to include pictures of my 65 gal. automatic tap and RO mixing system. I use a float switch to control a 24volt sprinkler valve that feeds both a supply to my RO unit (the yellow tube) and a tap water supply to a pressure regulator (on the left side of sprinkler valve) that goes to a drip emitter. I included a poor picture of the float switch attached to a piece of plexiglass and cable tied into the corner of the tank. I control the mix of RO to tap water by how fast the drip emitter feeds tap water into the tank as to how fast the RO feeds water into the tank. I took a measuring vessel and timed how long it took to fill and then adjusted the dripper to run 25% as fast. I have a tds meter to check the mix when I like to just make sure it is fairly constant. This allows me to use whatever portion of stored water I need and not have to worry about how to partially refill with the proper mix as it is always mixing in the proportion I want as it fills. When the water level in the storage tank drops below the float switch the sprinkler valve sends water to the RO and the drip emitter refilling the storage until the float switch shuts it off. FYI The same 24 volts controls a relay that turns off the filter and heaters while pumping out and refilling so I never worry about burning out a heater or running the filter right out of water. I use the filter to help off gassing and even out the heat. The dripper is positioned over the filter to fill it so when refill is done and power is restored the filter will automatically restart its siphon. The white hose is attached to an inexpensive plastic sump pump (1700 gph) that will pump out 60 gallons from the basement up to the first floor tanks in less than 5 minutes. This sytem is automated as is the aquarium pump out and re-fill side and would require someone with handyman skills to setup but could also be setup to run manually with float valves.

Thank you for taking the time to post the pics and explaining the process, but at this point I am too much of a newbie to be able to do something that advanced!

It would definitely make my life easier though. I need to keep this for a later on project!

It is not clear that your planned use of the third barrel will increase the volume of water available for a daily water change. I am assuming you need more than one barrel of heated/aged/mixed water for your daily water change. There are 3 steps that take significant time.

1. Make sufficient RO water.
2. Age/areate water for 24 hours
3. Heat water to tank temperature.

Steps 2 and 3 occur simultaneously, take 24 hours, and take place in barrel 1. Thus, only barrel 1 contents are available for a WC each 24 hour period. If the heating is not your "rate limiting step", then the 24 hour aging in either barrel would be. The only way to increase the volume of water available is to utilize 2 barrels for simultaneous heating/aging. Then after 24 hours, the contents of both would be ready for use.

I would recommend the following 3 barrel plan. Use 1 barrel for RODI water storage. Since your RODI system delivers water under a slight pressure, you could install this barrel at a height above barrels 2 and 3. You could use a simple/inexpensive float/cut-off valve on this barrel. This barrel would auto-fill from your RODI system, keeping the barrel full. You could gravity drain RODI water from this barrel into barrels 2 and 3. You could then add sufficient tap water and other additives to barrels 2 and 3, areate and heat for 24 hours. During the 24 hours, your RODI barrel would refill. After the 24 hour age/heating time, the contects of barrels 2 and 3 could be pumped into your tank for your WC. Barrels 2 and 3 would be plumbed together, thus only 1 transfer pump would be needed to pump the water to your tank (unless these barrels are located above your fish tank, allowing gravity draining of these barrels) and the RODI water would be evenly split between the two barrels. Yes this does require two heaters (one for barrel 2 and 3), but if you insulate the barrels, the energy cost is about the same and is dependent only on the quantity of water you are heating.

I thnik this would be the simplest system to build and operate if 1 55 gallon barrel was not sufficient volume for your daily water change. If 55 gallons/day were sufficient, eliminate barrel 3 and only use 2 barrels as described above (i.e. barrel 1 is your RODI storage barrel and barrel 2 is your mix/heat/age barrel).

Hey Dan- Thanks for the description, and yes it does sound pretty straight forward. But of course, I still have questions, LOL :

-How high would my RODI barrel have to be compared to the others in order for the water to flow into the other barrels?

-So would I only be able to refill both barrel 2 and 3 once theya re both completely empty?

Thank you so much, it is starting to get clearer now!

-Julie

[frenchie100]

float switch ... check valve ... pump

use a float switch to turn off pump when barrel with aged water becomes full. otherwise, pump moves water into aging barrel automatically. check valve used to keep water flowing in one direction only even when pump turned off and aging barrel has more water in it than others. you can daisy-chain as many barrels together like this that you want.

if you're worried about the float switch failing and creating a flood, consider using something like this:

http://autotopoff.com/products/DT1/

So this would be a regular submersible pump? You can connect it to a float switch?

Sorry, I really know nothing about this stuff!

Thanks!

[csarkar001]

maybe these pictures will help. A ball valuve lets you turn water on and off going from one location to another. a 90 is a right angle joint used to change the direction of water flow.

[frenchie100]

Thanks csarkar001- makes sense now 90= 90 degree angle, LOL ! I really should have known that!

[dan3949]

Below are answers to your questions:

-How high would my RODI barrel have to be compared to the others in order for the water to flow into the other barrels?

As long as the bottom of the RODI storage barrel is higher than the top of barrels 2 and 3, then gravity will do the work for you. I have a 35 gallon RODI storage barrel sitting on top of a heavy duty storage rack (it sits on a shelf about 5.5 feet off the ground). I have a 3/4" fitting/hose (standard garden hose) that is plumbed off the bottom of my RODI storage barrel. I can empty the entire contents into my mixing/feed barrel sitting on the ground in less than 2 minutes. Once the water level in the RODI barrel drops below the float valve, my RODI filter kicks on and re-fills the barrel over night. It is full the next morning.


-So would I only be able to refill both barrel 2 and 3 once theya re both completely empty?

No. If you only used 50 gallons of the combined 100 gallon inventory in barrels 2 and 3 (sounds like your normal routine), you could add additional RODI and tap water to top off the 2 barrels. However, the barrels would now have a mixture of both "aged" and "unaged" water. An alternate plan would be to isolate barrels 2 and 3 with valves and only use the entire contents of a single barrel for your 50 gallon water change. This would leave the other barrel as a "spare" 50 gallons. You would then have 50 gallons of "aged" water on hand and 50 gallons of "unaged" water at any given time (it would also require a few hours to heat up to tank temperature). However, since the extra water is planned for use only in case of an emergency, I think using a mixture of "aged" and "unaged" water would be fine in the infrequent case this would be needed. THus, I would probably recommend plumbing the two barrels together to keep it simple and easy. You could always change in the future as you gained experience/confidence in DIY plumbing.

[D!NGO]

Julie,

Can you build a simple stand so that you could put Barrel 3 on top of Barrels 2 and 1? This way, #3 will be your mixing barrel. When this barrel is filled you can open the Ball Valve(#1) and let the water drain into the barrel below. If you use 1" or larger pipe for your drain it should take less than 5 minutes to empty the top barrel...and you don't have to use an extra pump. You'll just have to remember to close the valve when it is emptied. You can leave Ball Valve #2 open so the two bottom barrels fill up at the same time...and closed if you need to use one at a time. You will figure out how to fill your bottom as your needs change. You'll have to use 2 heaters(one in each barrel) for the bottom barrels.

After the initial 2 fills, you'll have the 2 bottom barrels full. After you have used the water from either #1 or #2, you can open the ball valve to fill again.

The diagram should be self explanatory. Let me know if you have any more questions.

Take Care,
Derek

[frenchie100]

Hi Dan- Thanks for your reply. I like the answer the question #2, but not that of #1, LOL!!! I was hoping that wouldn't be the case, because that complicates everything!

Derek- Thanks for your clear explanation, and the diagram. It really helps. Question is, how wouls I ever clean the top barrel, if I can't reach it?

I am not sure I can build a stand, but I will see what I can do!

I really appreciate the help !

-Julie

[D!NGO]

Question is, how wouls I ever clean the top barrel, if I can't reach it?

Since these barrels are for storing clean water, you'd rarely need to clean them. I have my storage tank running for almost 3 years and I haven't clean it yet...and I have very hard water, pH 8.5+. I can see some mineral buildup but unless it flakes off into small bits that will clog the pumps, I see no reason to do so.

Besides, the standard barrels are about 32" high. If you stack them even with about 10" in between, the top of the upper barrel is only about 6 feet tall. With a 3 or 4 step latter you'll have no problem.

If you must clean it, you can put a "T" above Ball Valve#1 and have another ball valve(we'll call this Ball Valve#3) at the end of the T...so after you clean the top barrel, you open the Valve#3 and it'll drain to a bucket or whatever you have hook up to it...as long as the drainage end is not higher than the water level in the top barrel. Do I make sense? HTH

Let me know if it's not clear and I can redraw the diagram.

Good luck,
Derek

[frenchie100]

Hi Derek,

Okay, I am giving in and will go with the raised barrel idea, because ultimately, it is the simplest way to do it.

How do I build a stand that can confidently hold my 55 gallon barrel up? do you know anywhere that has a step by step way to do it?

Thank you for taking the time to explain all this to me!

-Julie

[D!NGO]

Hi Derek,

Okay, I am giving in and will go with the raised barrel idea, because ultimately, it is the simplest way to do it.

How do I build a stand that can confidently hold my 55 gallon barrel up? do you know anywhere that has a step by step way to do it?

Thank you for taking the time to explain all this to me!

-Julie

Sorry Julie, I don't know of a place to show a step by step instructions. I think if you search the net you'll find something. But keep in mind that 55 gallon of water with all it's equipments is going to weigh more than 500 lbs. Also, I see that you are in earthquake country like me, so you'll have to consider that as well.

I can guide you through it but writing it and showing it is a totally different thing.

Feel free to ask if you need more help.

Derek

[csarkar001]

dingo, what strain of fish is that in your avatar?

[D!NGO]

dingo, what strain of fish is that in your avatar?

It's a tiger pigeon from Kenny.

Here is the thread I just posted recently:

http://forum.simplydiscus.com/showthread.php?t=72655

[frenchie100]

Hi Derek- Thanks so much. I am going to start searching the net this afternoon. I looked at your link and WOW, your fish are gorgeous!

Thanks for your time. I'll bug you some more when I get stuck !

-Julie

[Patr1ck]

Hi Julie, I know that its been a few days since the last post. What is the reason that you are wanting to age the water for 24 hrs? Chlorine? I have a 90 gal too. I used a blend of tap and ro water for my wc's in a barrel. When I would aerate the barrel for 2 hours and then check the chlorine levels, they were non existant? I use a 55 gallon barrel as well. I use a quiet one 2200 pump that sits in the bottom of the barrel to aerate the water with turbulence. The water was fine for the fish after 2 hours of aeration. A pair spawned every 10 days with this method. For a while, and prior to the aforementioned, I was using 100% reconstituted ro and during that time I had an "emergency" and had to fill the complete tank with tap and dechlor. The next day the pair that i was talking about earlier actually became a pair then. They started doing the shake thing. A couple days later I had eggs. This was the first time thad they had ever spawned. After I filled the tank with 100% tap I was performing wc's with an ro/tap blend now and after that, the pair were spawning every 10 days or so. I guess what im saying is that, depending on the gallons per day output of your ro filter, you would really only need to use one 55 gal barrel, thus saving you some time and some space. Also if you filled the barrel back up with the required amount of tap right after the wc, the tap would have almost 24 hours to age before the next wc as well. Hopefully this makes things more convenient for you, if not, good luck with your project, things like that are fun, Im about to start a couple of my own.

hth,
Pat