"Bill Stock" wrote in message
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"NetMax" wrote in message
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"Bill Stock" wrote in message
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"NetMax" wrote in message
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"Bill Stock" wrote in message
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I'm looking for some info on drip irrigation parts. I'll be setting
up a continuous water change system down the road (tank needs moved
first), so I'm doing a bit of research. I've seen that some people
use a pressure regulator valve and others use a "drip irrigation
controller". I gather the drip irrigation controller is more
precise and more expensive. Perhaps someone can give me the details
of their setup and the pros and cons of the two methods. Also where
to buy parts, HD for a water pressure valve?

My plan is two use a water pressure regulator, water filter with
GAC cartridges, siphon overflow and a solenoid with float switch
for backup. BTW, should the pressure regulator go before or after
the water filter? I may also have to add an auto doser for dechlor,
but I'll have to do some testing first.

TIA


Use activated carbon to de-chlor. For chloramines, carbon still
works, but Centaur carbon would be the recommended choice (there are
many carbon grades available). You want about 2.5gpm or slower for
carbon to de-chlor. Position the carbon filter downstream of other
filters as carbon will exhaust itself on other contaminants as well.

LOL, I only need about 10 gpd, so GAC s/b good. Although the GF do
like their fresh water.

Oops on 2.5gpm. I was just copying notes from when I was last
researching this. At the time I had the water changer running 10
minutes 4 times a day on 4 banks (one at a time), and I was hitting
5gpm, so I had to throttle the entire system down (or increase my
carbon bed to 2 sq.ft.), but I was doing 27 tanks at a time. If you
are doing less tanks, or are using a low pressure continous drip, then
that spec is not applicable to you. For home use, I prefer the
continuous drip with a reserve capacity (before overflow) of about 24
to 36 hours. As long as I'm home once a day, I'll catch a
non-critical failure (usually a clog in the siphons). Of course you
can install overflow cut-offs, but it's nice to have system
redundancy.

I'm starting to wonder if a timer would not be a better idea. I did not
see any reliable/cheap slow drip systems. Most of the plastic valves I
saw said "NOT FOR CONTINUOUS USE". The few brass valves that I saw were
still at least 3gpm and varied widely depending on the pressure drop.
(Although I suspect I'm missing something here, as I doubt I get 3gpm
at full pressure) The other factor is solenoid life, most solenoids for
irrigation are NC, which means I would need to apply power continuously
for a constant drip system. I doubt the cheap solenoids are rated for
continuous duty.

A factor which might influence your choice is the hardness of your water.
Hard well water is hard on CDS (continuous drip systems) as there is
usually a very small orifice somewhere which collects scale. However CDS
are very fault tolerant because the feed rate is so low. If you are
doing 4 or 5 drops a minute, a 20 or 30% reduction would not
significantly effect the operation. Just keep it visible, so that you
can manually correct it as required. Think about a small waterfall over
your tank feeding various terrestrial plants.

Timed systems i) have the benefit of your probable presence in case
something goes wrong, ii) are less tolerant of faults (as you are using
higher flow rates), and iii) there is a bit more planning on holding
capacity and hose diameters to keep everything downstream of the pressure
valve at a much lower resistance.

You do need to use NC solenoids, but depending on type, they most
probably will not wear being held in this position. Some are held in the
open position through a magnetic field so you just consume a bit of
electricity.

Another system is a manual-set automatic water changer. As desired, go
to the system and press ON for the various stages (or have them all
programmed, or leave it all manual). An example would be to i) backwash
your canister filter to the drain (lowering your main tank water level),
ii) pump water into your main from a holding tank (or gravity feed from a
tank whose volume = your water change quantity), iii) refill your holding
tank from your source water. If automated and anything goes astray, have
shut-off valves handy.

Hope there were some useful ideas in there for you )

Also on the GAC, get a chlorine tester. There is no accurate method
of predicting the usable life expectancy of carbon as the
chlorine/chloramine and other contaminents can vary significantly,
even by season in the same location. We generally counted on 12
months of life, but chlorine tests showed we got more than that (of
course this varies by your water, type of carbon and cc's of carbon
used).
--
www.NetMax.tk


Research automatic lawn sprinkler systems for a bevy of applicable
components (controllers, valves etc).

Thanks NetMax, helpful as always. Some of the irrigation stuff is
quite cheap compared to aquarium products.

--
www.NetMax.tk