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1 inch Dema
valve |
Both Laser holding
tanks |
Dema valve, PVC
into tank |
Sump type
float switch |
Transformer |
Holding tank |
I'm recycling the RO waste water to the rinse water
on the automatic. Took a pickup truck tank and put it up higher
than the holding tank on the auto. Then got two dema valves and
a float switch. And about 20 feet of 1 1/2 PVC.
The plastic holding tank is what farmers buy around
the Midwest to put in the back of their trucks to haul water to
stock animals. If you try to buy a large plastic tank from any other
place you will pay much more. It has a 2" fitting on the bottom.
Just take the water you are sending to the drain
now and run it to the tank. Also you need to connect another hose
to the side of the tank for overflow, in case it should overfill.
Come out with large pipe because this is gravity flow so you need
to oversize it to get volume. Put a ball valve on so you can work
on anything down stream.
The PVC is cheap and easy to work with so if you
make a mistake just cut it off and try again. I used the largest
dema solenold valve I could get my hands on which was 1", but
bigger is better. This item will get expensive fast if you go big.
The reason I didn't go with a mechanical float valve is that they
need more pressure behind them to shut off completely. So if you
were to use that kind of valve it would always leak.
Then just elbow it down into the tank about 4 or
5 inches off the bottom. This now give you a base or a platform
to mount your float valve. I did use two different kinds of float
valves, just experimenting with it now to see which one works best,
if you look at the pictures you can see the two different ones.
One is mounted on the side of the tank and has a wire going down
inside the tank with two little black weights. The other is a sump
type float that is easier to mount but the down side to this type
is that the water has to drop down further for it to switch on.
The only adjustment on this is how long the cable is from where
you mount it to the side of the pipe going down in the tank. See
picture This is what is called throw. The longer the cable from
the pipe the higher and lower the water gets in the tank, vise versa
if you make the cable shorter. but I have found that the very shortest
I can set this is still not as much control as I'd like.
As far as getting into the wiring its all 24 volts
because your working around water. Just run one side of the 24 volts
(it doesn't matter which common or hot) to one of the wires on the
solenoid valve. the other wire (from the transformer) goes to one
of the wires on the float switch, the other wire on the float switch
goes to the remaining wire on the solenoid valve. to complete the
circuit. Hope this is not too overly simplistic of an explanation.
Did some fine tuning because it overflowed twice.
Its got to be set up just right. So far I'm using all of the RO
waste water.
When the bottom basters come on, the fresh water
valve doesn't even come on. This should lower the water bill.
This is for two automatics.
So far I have $120 in the tank which is a 210 gal,
$45 each in two dema valves,
$20 in 1 1/2 PVC pipe,
$8 for elbows,
$34 each for two float switches to turn on the dema valves,
$24 for a 24 volt transformer to power the valves,
$7 each for two 1 1/2 plastic ball valves.
Pat
Hall's Setup Similar but Different
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