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Unread 07/23/2009, 07:36 PM   #23
jason2459
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Iowa
Posts: 9,671
Well, found a site that has given me exactly the idea I need to put together an ATO. I'll have a 5 gallon bucket under the stand to pump RO/DI water into manually. Use the aqualifter to pump water into the tank. No worries with that pump if the res. runs dry.

Will have two float sensors to turn off the pump when the water is at the desired level. One at about 2in down from the top and the other at about 1in down from the top as a fail safe. Also, a third float sensor about three inches down in the opposite position to turn the pump off if the tank is some how drained (ie. skimmer going nutso or even worse tank failure leaking water). Each sensor will be encased in a pvc house with caps and drilled holes to prevent critters crawling on them and ripple action on top of the water switching them on and off.

If all the two top float switches fail because they got salt creep or anything else that might make them stick between periodic cleanings I'll have a gri water sensor mounted on the floor to turn the pump off.

Hopefully it'll be as failsafe as possible. All sensors will be controlling a 12v relay switching a standard power cord to the pump. IF total failure happens I'll probably only be keeping about 3 gallons of water in the top of container at a time which I'm guessing will last about a week from the last time I had this tank setup.

Yes, I'm paranoid about water flooding now. lol

BTW, got the setup idea from a website that deals with auto top off and is a dot com. Kind of put all that together and you have the website name. Not sure what this forums policy is on listing sites that are not sponsors so I'll leave it at that until I get the lay of the land down more around here.


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