Mixing Station Improvement

[Raptor72]

I revamped my mixing station about 6 months ago and have noticed my salinity going up slowly on my tank. I believe it’s because I use the same ( bottom ) can for mixing and holding top off water before I pump it to the DT. I have tried dumping several gallons of RO water into the can after every mix and letting it drain out through a valve but I don’t think it’s getting everything out.

Any suggestions on redoing this so I don’t have this issue? I’ve been thinking of putting another valve where the arrow is so that the RO water goes straight to the pump and never makes it into the bottom can.

Thoughts?

[saveafish]

Here is mine. Maybe I'll give you an idea

[saveafish]

Here try again

[Raptor72]

While I appreciate the picture, it doesn't help me much with answering my question.

I'd like to keep the current configuration due to lack of space. I'll be switching the lower can for a bigger one in the near future and just want to dial my choices down now.

[saveafish]

Originally Posted by Raptor72

While I appreciate the picture, it doesn't help me much with answering my question.

I'd like to keep the current configuration due to lack of space. I'll be switching the lower can for a bigger one in the near future and just want to dial my choices down now.

Right gotcha. Sorry net tooted and lost this part..

If you mix salt out of one it stays that way. You never get the last drops of salt out. Like mine there is still 5gal when sucked dry. That's 2 1/2 cups of salt. Left behind. If you add rodi to it its still a bit salty and over time it will add up. Take the pic like mine and turn it sideways. That will help to where you can plumb for both rodi when needed or salt. Never use one tank for both or your salt levels will go up in your tank.

[coryjac0b]

I think your best bet is what was @saveafish suggested. Keep them separate. Is it possible to draw top off water out of the beige drum on top?

[Raptor72]

Originally Posted by coryjac0b

I think your best bet is what was @saveafish suggested. Keep them separate. Is it possible to draw top off water out of the beige drum on top?

Yes, I figured it out. The best way was to put a valve where I had indicated and there will be no water contact with the bottom barrel, just straight into the pump.

[Sharpimage]

I have a tee and a valve where your flex pipe is. When u am do e, I open the valve and all water not in the barrel is dumped.

[Raptor72]

Originally Posted by Sharpimage

I have a tee and a valve where your flex pipe is. When u am do e, I open the valve and all water not in the barrel is dumped.

Not sure if you are using the microphone to text but I couldn’t make sense of it.

[Sharpimage]

At the lowest point, I have a discharge pipe. When I am finished, I close the valves at the drums and open the discharge pipe. All water in the pipes dumps on the floor or lawn on my case

[Raptor72]

Right, I did the same, though I couldn’t get it as low as I wanted.

[Raptor72]

Ok, so I added the extra valve so water wouldn’t go into the salt tank, (red arrow) but once I did that, I noticed that the intake (yellow arrow) came from the bottom of the bottom barrel, so really, nothing was accomplished by this.

[BigDave]

I hate to say this, but you need to replumb the entire thing to fix your issue.

You need to have both the water from the bottom of the lower bucket and the bottom of the upper bucket to go through a T into the yellow pump. Put the T and valves as close to the intake of the pump as possible to reduce the amount of pipe from the T to the pump.

Then run your outputs to where ever it is you need it to go. Looks like you want the output to at least go into the top of the lower bucket for cycling the salt water.

My tanks are side by side, but you can see what I'm talking about in my picture below. My salt tank is to the right and the freshwater tank is on the left:

[Raptor72]

Alright, so I finally got around to replumbing this while making as few changes as possible. I was able to add a T half way down to bypass the water going into the mixing can and straight into the pump.

I was successful. I added water to my ATO this morning just by opening the valve. There’s enough water weight coming from the top tank that it was able to gravity feed 50 feet away at a very good rate. I turned on the pump just to see the difference and it pumped it out twice as fast! I think I will just add one of those python valves to be able to shut off the flow when it’s being gravity fed instead of having to run back to the station, even though just putting my thumb on the end was enough to stop it.