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Here's my Big Office System

Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

So, if you didn't think I NEEDED to do all of this work to upgrade my sump before, you will now!

Walked into my office today to find my current return pump a Mag 9 that replaced a QO 4000 that seized, seized. ::)

Judging from my relatively unused ATO resiviour, it happened as soon as I walked out the door New Years eve, I was away all day yesterday taking my mother back up to my sister's house and never even got here.

Although my returns are set so as not to drain the DT or fuge, the evap out of the DT was nearly ten gallons! Enough to expose one of my frag racks and the top of my tabling a. valida. :-\

Ugh! It's pretty ugly to see. :-\

It's always something in this hobby!!!! :(
 
blange3

blange3

Re: Here's my 120

I feel your pain Bax, hope it all works out.

I'm just waiting for a major failure as I finish my upgrade.

I've had a few minor floods and tripped breakers as I tweak things before the big transfer.

Hang in there! ;)
 
D

ds4x4

Re: Here's my 120

wow ... i'[m glad the only problem i have had was operator error.. as i forgot to top off the 220 and then had the GF stick the hose in it to top it off.. well she left the hose on and overflowed both tanks.. lmao good thing its in the basement
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

I usually wander through my office at least once a day even on the weekends. So, it's a real fluke that things happened as they did to bring about this result. The big losses are the damage to the valida colony on the heels of the green millie loss ::), and the yellow austera I got from merv in the frag swap is a total loss .... bummer :p
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

So here's a schematic of what I am doing to the office system.
Now that the Sump and manifold are plumbed out, I am hoping I'll be able to swap it in soon. I have started cutting lumber pieces for the frag tank stand. I bough a Pocket Hole Jig to make the joints, never used one before so that should be fun! I am still working on the family room and trying to get a new flat screen hung in time for the GIANTS game as well. So, I don't know if I'll get to the sump or not this week, but I really want to do the swap! All these grand plans should fall right into place once the sump & manifold are flowing water! :D

Jan09OfficeSystemModsPics.jpg
 
malulu

malulu

NJRC Member
Re: Here's my 120

wow... it is pretty...!

i assume you have some ways to prevent all those water to overflow the 29 PM sump (IF the Baxacuda pump ever went bad).
;)
 
JRWOHLER

JRWOHLER

Re: Here's my 120

Just one question Bax...will the chiller be effective where you have it? BTW thanks for the Iodine suggestion I think my tank must have needed a little, everything really looks better then it did.
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

David I am probably going to add either 1" check valves on unions so I can clean them over the BVs of the manifold, or one large 2" DUCV check before the manifold. Still pondering that as the 10ish gal of free board in the sump won't cut it. I am concerned that 2" would be only one check and if it failed, I gain nothing, where as individual checks on each line, that are more easily cleanable would probably be a better way to go.

... What do you think?

I think the chiller will be much more efficient here than in the current place. Now foe lack of a good way to feed it, I have a CL running thru my fuge that feeds the chiller. If I find it to be still lacking in efficientcy, I'll just feed the chiller outlet right to the tank(s).

... How else should I plumb it?

Thanks for the reviews! I am too close to this now and just want it done, but I really want to minimize the "Wish I had ... " list in the aftermath. :p
 
JRWOHLER

JRWOHLER

Re: Here's my 120

... How else should I plumb it?
Click to expand...

Sorry I didn't mean for it to come off wrong...your plumbing is more then I could attempt. I was just curious as it was sort of a mini loop inside sump. I don't know diddly about chillers and was just trying to pick your brain. I in my totally ignorant opionion would have had the pump feed it then through the manifold...that is probably totally wrong. :-\ Also if that would be the best way to do it then I could in the future run a line out of my sump and back into sump.
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

Hey! No offense taken! I was really asking if I am doing it right! :D

My current system, out of the need to meet the flow requirements of the chiller, feeds from a CL that just loops thru the fuge. This is VERY inefficient as the fuge is chilly, but the chilly fuge water then mixes with the sump water which returns to the tank at a warmer temp. ... That's definitely not the way to do it.

My thinking with this loop is that I am chilling the water in the sump which returns to the DT, frag and fuge, so all returning water is chilled by the chiller effluent, not just one vessel.

The only other, more efficient, thing I could think of was feeding the chiller from the manifold and them allowing the chiller effluent to go straight to the 120 and frag tank via dedicate discharge lines. But, that's a lot of extra piping to address.

...Thoughts?
 
R

REEFLECTIONS

Re: Here's my 120

i think as long as the chiller is mixing with any water in the system it is accomplishing it's purpose, wouldn't it all equal out in the end cause it's lowering the temp of the system as a whole?
 
jimroth

jimroth

Re: Here's my 120

Hey Bax, I'm thinking of giving iodine a try again. How much to you add on what schedule? I have genuine Lugol's solution to dose.
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

REEFLECTIONS said:
i think as long as the chiller is mixing with any water in the system it is accomplishing it's purpose, wouldn't it all equal out in the end cause it's lowering the temp of the system as a whole?
Click to expand...

Not nessecerally, in my current configuration where the chiller loops thru the fuge, I only mix in the fuge through put with the system water,. That's about 400 gph. The fuge is chilly! But the rest of the system can get a little warm yet the chiller is shutting off cuase the fuge is cool.

If I return the loop to the sump, my thought is all the returning water in the system will be chilled.TThe returned water would be mixing in the sump where the highest through put of any vessel is. I think, this'll be the MOST efficient. That is what I am look'n for. ???
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

jimroth said:
Hey Bax, I'm thinking of giving iodine a try again. How much to you add on what schedule? I have genuine Lugol's solution to dose.
Click to expand...

I dose Kent's Iodine when I change any water, or see a molt in the Blood shrimp. I have done it weekly in the past and I would like to get back to that as I belive it was helpful to invert health overall. But I really feel I should test to do that (Not that I tested before, but...)

The bottle says to dose 5 ml per 50 g of volume per day! Seems like a lot to me. ::) Even when I dosed "regularly", I dosed that much per week! It's kinda the reason I never bothered testing as I doubted very much I was over dosing.

The Lugol's is concetrated, even more so than the Kent's. It would follow a different dosing fomula. It may also be a different species of iodine, there are several. And reef pundits like Randy Holmes Farly have some interesting stuff to say about it, which I've read in the past, but feel like it might be splitting hairs ... I dunno!
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

Back to the chiller plumbing, here's a reply from a poster on RC and my dilerious rambbling reply that sums up most, if not all of the chiller flow options.

QUOTE from a friend on RC
"Personally I'd like to see the chiller have its own dedicated closed loop. You could have a chiller feed pump in or connected to your sump, and the chiller could return directly to the display tank, or your tank could drain directly to the chiller, with the return going to the sump before being pumped back up to your display. As you have it, there will be chilled water mixing in the sump and feeding the chiller again, so it may end up turning on and off more frequently as the display volume's water reduces more slowly. I may not have explained this correctly, but I think you catch my drift. "

I have thought some about this, here's some of my concerns and dysfunctional emotional issues.

I did not want to feed the chiller off a drain as it'll be raw water that needs to processed (skimmer/fuge/UV/etc.) where it'll be, at least somewhat, heated again if all this process occurs post chiller. No to mention, I'll probably have to pull the chiller to clean it more often cause of the raw water going through it. Maybe the cleaning's not a big issue, but the gain in heat through the fuge & skimming and such may be.

I could run a third pump just to feed the chiller drawing water off that right end of the sump, where all the "hot" drain water is returning. But this would still be "raw water" facing the same post chiller heating issues as above. And, even if I step down to a Dart from the Cuda, my pump power consumption would probably diminish any efficientcy gained.

If I run it as a CL just on the DT, I'd still have to run the third pump and look at the CL.

If I ran it on a loop back to the sump with a dedicated pump, I think it'd be the same thing I am doing now with the manifold. My though has been that I am keeping all the system water as stable as possible in this way. But, is it efficient, if you think the chiller is going to cycle too frequently, then maybe it is not efficient and that would be the error in this method.

Having the chiller effluent run straight to either the 120 or split to all the tanks 120 DT/ 100frag/ 75fuge would work. But in any mixture of this "direct chiller return" scenario, I could conceivable have one tank running cool and another running hot at different times of the day. My lighting schedules will be different on all tanks to reduce max temps transferred to the system water. I suppose the temperature blending in the sump would keep any one tank from getting too cool, would it?


So it seems to boil down to :

1)
Leave it as I have it planned out, feeding the chiller off the manifold and back to the sump.

OR

2)
Feed the chiller off the manifold and discharge the chiller effluent to the DT or DT/frag/fuge.


I could start as I have it with option 1 and if the chiller is cycling too much replumb the effluent to some version of option 2 based upon what my tank temps run in the summer.
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

Baxreefs said:
Back to the chiller plumbing, here's a reply from a poster on RC and my dilerious rambbling reply that sums up most, if not all of the chiller flow options.

QUOTE from a friend on RC
"Personally I'd like to see the chiller have its own dedicated closed loop. You could have a chiller feed pump in or connected to your sump, and the chiller could return directly to the display tank, or your tank could drain directly to the chiller, with the return going to the sump before being pumped back up to your display. As you have it, there will be chilled water mixing in the sump and feeding the chiller again, so it may end up turning on and off more frequently as the display volume's water reduces more slowly. I may not have explained this correctly, but I think you catch my drift. "

I have thought some about this, here's some of my concerns and dysfunctional emotional issues.

I did not want to feed the chiller off a drain as it'll be raw water that needs to processed (skimmer/fuge/UV/etc.) where it'll be, at least somewhat, heated again if all this process occurs post chiller. No to mention, I'll probably have to pull the chiller to clean it more often cause of the raw water going through it. Maybe the cleaning's not a big issue, but the gain in heat through the fuge & skimming and such may be.

I could run a third pump just to feed the chiller drawing water off that right end of the sump, where all the "hot" drain water is returning. But this would still be "raw water" facing the same post chiller heating issues as above. And, even if I step down to a Dart from the Cuda, my pump power consumption would probably diminish any efficientcy gained.

If I run it as a CL just on the DT, I'd still have to run the third pump and look at the CL. Additionally, the chiller would now be under the stand bringing heat and noise into my already hot and noisy office.

If I ran it on a loop back to the sump with a dedicated pump, I think it'd be the same thing I am doing now with the manifold. My though has been that I am keeping all the system water as stable as possible in this way. But, is it efficient, if you think the chiller is going to cycle too frequently, then maybe it is not efficient and that would be the error in this method.

Having the chiller effluent run straight to either the 120 or split to all the tanks 120 DT/ 100frag/ 75fuge would work. But in any mixture of this "direct chiller return" scenario, I could conceivable have one tank running cool and another running hot at different times of the day. My lighting schedules will be different on all tanks to reduce max temps transferred to the system water. I suppose the temperature blending in the sump would keep any one tank from getting too cool, would it?


So it seems to boil down to :

1)
Leave it as I have it planned out, feeding the chiller off the manifold and back to the sump.

OR

2)
Feed the chiller off the manifold and discharge the chiller effluent to the DT or DT/frag/fuge.


I could start as I have it with option 1 and if the chiller is cycling too much replumb the effluent to some version of option 2 based upon what my tank temps run in the summer.
Click to expand...
 
Baxreefs

Baxreefs

Re: Here's my 120

So after much deliberation, apparently there is a better way to run the chiller loop. Here's the new schematic with the chiller discharging to the display & frag tanks.

Jan09OfficeSystemModsRev1.jpg


With plumbing, as we all know, the devil is in the details. So, I'll map out all the fittings on this schematic and get gluing.
 
jimroth

jimroth

Re: Here's my 120

Bax,
That's cool that you have Pac Man helping out there in the lower right. What does he do, eat nitrates? ;D
 
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