Day 4/5, the fun must go on!

During the week, my replacement Apex and all the bits arrived.  The previous one was the subject of some unwanted corrosion and rust, from poor placement.  I actually disassembled it, and carefully cleaned it with Q-tips and isopropyl alcohol, but not much luck was had.  The unit works, and the ethernet works, but every other port on the device is dead.  I actually have enough extra bits that I could have just gotten it working, but I decided that if it was partially dead, it was on it's way to being fully dead, and nobody needs that at 3am.  I may actually install it on my 125, because that one doesn't need much in the way of control, just measurement and run the LED's.  I wonder if I went PWM or 0-10v on those....

So the Apex and the EB832's were mounted.  I mounted the Apex super high up, to avoid any more splashes of doom.  The Energy Bars were mounted as high as I could, without having to make everything an extension cord.  The modules just kind of went where they made sense more or less.

I also decided to re-route the water line for the RO, that feeds to the ATO reservoir.  While doing so, I decided to change out the DI resin.  Originally, I used some heavy duty drywall anchors to mount the DI canister on the wall.  Turns out, bad idea.  When I tried to turn the body to unscrew it, I could feel the anchors ripping the wall apart.  So down it came, put in a header board, back up it went. 

I also tore some of the return pump plumbing apart, and wired in the FM-100 flow monitors.  I don't actually care how much flow I have in those return pipes.  What I do care about however, is if it is flowing or not.  I want multiple levels of redundancy here, so the plan is to put an optical level sensor on each sump, and the flow meters, so I can tell if one pump stops, slows down significantly, explodes, whatever.  This would cause the level on one of the two sumps to rise a bit, and unbalance them, meaning I need to compensate by slowing down the other pump.

Speaking of unbalanced sumps, I was thinking up failure scenarios, and I realized I had made a boo-boo.  There are two sumps.  Each sump has a return, and a drain feeding into it.  Now in the scenario where one pump stops, and the other runs, the problem is, that the water will come down the drains equally on both sides, but on the running side, it pumps it back up, where half of it goes to the dead side.  This continues until the working pump overflows the non-working sump.

To fix this, I watched a few Youtube videos on drilling acrylic sumps until I had enough courage to take a drill to a $400 sump, and went at it.  Two holes later, near the bottom of the pump housing, I had some bulkheads installed, and ran a pipe between the two sumps.  I then filled the system up, and simulated the failure scenario, and while they didn't remain the same height, the down sump remained well below the top, meaning that my evil plan worked.

Finally, with everything wired up, I set upon the programming a bit.  I've only finished about half of it at this point, and will post it all once I've got it all debugged.  Mostly I put in a bunch of code to deal with pump failure scenarios, because paranoia.

And then, finally, I got to turn the returns on.  Woo, very slowly I ramped both of them up to 100%.  It's interesting how much less power I have than with the old Dolphins.  The drains have absolutely no problem keeping up, I don't even have to tune the siphons on them.  Which admittedly is kind of nice, it just works and I don't have to mess with it.  In the end I'm ok with this,.

While testing, I found another critical error.  I installed a check valve on each pump.  However on one pump, I placed a tee above the check valve that runs to the GFO/Carbon filters.  This meant that when the pump was stopped, it decided to siphon the tank down through the reactors, and then into the sump.  Sigh.  For now I adjusted one of the returns to be right at the top of the water level. This doesn't actually present a problem, as I didn't like where that line was anyhow.  But I don't fully trust it, so.. I'll probably have to special order a tee from FlexPVC and redo that side.

Next was the ATO and Neptune ATK kit.  Ok, easy, install the PMUP, install the little float valve thing, run the wires over to the FMM, plug them in, and, hey, the 1Link cable isn't long enough.  Argh.  Well, guess I need to order an extension cable.  Sigh, now I have to manually run the RO in there to keep the system stable until UPS blesses me again.

I ended up getting alot accomplished this weekend, and got myself some little side projects that need doing now.  For example, I've re-created a rats nest of wiring with the electrics and the Apex.  I also need to install some surge suppressors in the main outlets, to avoid any damage to the expensive bits.  The heaters are in, and are slowing bringing the tank back up to a reasonable temperature.  I hacked together a spare Tunze->Apex cable with the remains of the one from the old system, so I need to wire that in and setup the Tunze's to run.  UPS also blessed me with my MightyMagnet F5, so now I have some incentive to hit the front with a scraper and start being able to view the tank.

Next on my list, is a whole bunch of 3D printed parts.  I need to make a ton of little brackets to hold float switches, manage cords coming out of the sumps, manage cords on the wall, etc etc.  That ought to keep me busy for awhile.  Of course anything I design I'll put up on thingiverse.

Day 5 over, exhausted, I go to bed.