Using C-bus to drain and pump Xltrs of Water

Hi there,

I was wondering if anyone could help and advise on a cost effective solution to my problem (?):

I'm looking at installing a underground water tank in the front of my house where I'd like to store approx 2000LTRS of natural sea water (delivered by a truck)

I'd like to be able to use c-bus to allow monitoring of water levels in the tank
Then on a weekly basis I would like to use c-bus (Wiser) to turn off the 2 circulation pumps in my aquarium in the house, check to ensure that there is enough water in the 2000LTR tank, then drain 150LTRS from the aquarium, then pump 150LTRS of water from the front tank to the aquarium, then re-enable the 2 circulation pumps in aquarium

I'm trying to do all this to save $$$ and time as my current process of mixing our own salt isnt the greatest for the fish, it requires quite a bit of time to do the water changes and on top Id much prefer to be buying and storing salt water rather than using and storing synthetic / natural salt

If anyone has experience in anything like this and does service the norwest sydney area, Id love to hear from you and get some approximate quotes, or from anyone in order to help firm up a better idea if Im off my game here

Thanks for reading every1

 

This doesnt answer your question but have you considered installing a water treatment stage so that you have almost infinite use out of the sea water that you are trucking in.

What you may find is that dumping sea water into your local drainage (which I presume is your storm drain) would deliver thousands of litres of salty water into the local river systems and water table. I dont think you are permitted in NSW to dump sea water into the sewer.

I would look at creating a substantial reservoir of water (which you have) and have 150L in purification at after the fish are done with it. You will find that this would be far more enjoyable for you and your wallet to be self sufficient. By the way there is no such thing as artificial salt. All of those salts are extracted from salt lakes or sea water and almost all of them are a cocktail of soluble minerals (perfectly natural).

You would conserve far more water, learn a huge amount and get self-sufficiency by handling the problem this way.

 

Thanks for your response.

Im looking at using the salt water for things, but right now I'm just looking at solutions for the issue where I can utilise c-bus for controlling volume and the pumping of water

Looking forward to any other responses

 

In that case you would need sensors at both the storage end and at the transfer container. It only needs to pump until the storage is empty or the destination is full.

 

Thanks so much for your help tobex

Would you be able to link to any such devices so I can get a rough idea of what cost this request will cost me?

Thanks again for your time, its greatly appreciated

 

You should first read these 2 posts. If you need anything more, do not hesitate to ask.

http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7242&highlight=tank+sensors

http://www.cbusforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4234&highlight=water&page=2

 

Personally I would not use C-bus for this. While it can be done its not really what it was designed for (other will disagree).

I would use (and do use) a PLC from Automation Direct/. Go to PLC Control and then Click PLC for the different options.

The ClickPLC is a small PLC unit that has two analog inputs and built for exactly the type of thing you are wanting to do.

Best of all its only $99 - which is so cheap its not funny. I use one for power monitoring and stock watering. It also makes a great programmable irrigation controller. [Its also expandable so as you system grows so can the PLC]

It has a serial port (modbus) so you could use a Pac to communicate to it or you could initiate a sequence from C-bus by using a relay output connected to a digital input on the PLC.

If you wanted to start monitoring more information from it, then there are different ways to do this, and this depends on what you currently have as well, but suffice to say that a very customizable GUI could be created.

As for the sensors, you could start to use flow meter with a pulse output which should be cheaper than an analog level transmitter. 1 Pulse will equal a fixed volume of water and the PLC will totalize the flow and stop pumping when the limit is reached. The PLC can send out ASCII strings if a PAC is available and C-Bus is controlling the pump. If not, the PLC can control the pump directly.

Its actually quite a good project and should work very well once completed.

Mick

 

About 12 years ago I bought some float switches used in boats. They seem to do all I ever needed them to do. Working out logic is something else.

I "invented" my own flexible delay timers using 555 chips. This gave the pumps a more substantial load rather than doing hundreds of little water transfers.

I spent about $60 back then. I suspect its cheaper now and you wouldn't have to do any soldering.

 

Hi Mrees,

Like most things in automation, there are a hundred ways of doing it with multiple levels of sophistication. By the way you say 'I'd like to be able to use c-bus to ......' I assume you have some C-bus already and are adding to your system.

If you want 'cheap and cheerful', here it is. You will need to have a device supporting a scheduler somewhere in your C-Bus network, be it a timer, Wiser, CTC, Homegate, B&W etc.

Buy a 2 channel relay. Use it to run the circulation pumps and a pump from your tank.

Put a drain line at the highest water point in your aquatic tank.

Syphon / drain out 150 litres by measuring buckets etc at 9 litres each (or whatever your bucket holds)

Now turn on the tank pump (with back-flow prevention valve) and measure how long it takes to refill the aquatic tank back to the highest point.

In your scheduler, use this number of minutes / seconds of pump run time to pump 150 litres in each week. If it send slightly more, it just runs out the drain a little longer than the 'normal' 150 litre water swap but it is all used to dilute/clean the aquatic tank so is not wasted. It will probably vary a little based on head pressure. At the end of the scheduled 'water swap', turn the circulation pump back on with another scheduled event.

A simple t+1 counter in logic could count the number of cycles and tell you quite accurately how much was left in the outside tank (eg counts 5 cycles at 150 litres = 2000 - 750 = 1250 remaining). When your tank gets refilled, you can either manually reset the counter using a touch screen button etc, or use a float switch attached to a bus coupler to reset it when the tank is refilled. Or even use a spare group address and 'nudge' it down x% each time, set back to ON (255) when you refill.

Now of course, if you want you can measure and make decisions based on every point in the system like a full on industrial project, its up to you really how berserk you want to go beyond simple.

All the best,

Brad

 

Speaking for myself, that ship sailed long ago ... that is how I arrived at this port.

 

depends on if you prefer to buy sensors or fish!!

 

Thanx so much for everyones responses
Apologies its taken me so long to thank everyone

Still analysing and looking at options
And yes to clarify, Im currently running a wiser

 

Let us know what you do in the end.

I have a wiser and an aquarium (1000l) and I have solenoids setup for turning water on/off to fill up through irrigation controller which is fairly simple. This is all done through my water tanks and water pump. Pump turns on with rainbank when it sense pressure from solenoid opening. I trigger solenoid manually at moment through cbus.

I am looking at connecting water floats and a cbus controlled solenoid to drain the water as well but haven't read on what I need to connect water floats to tell the cbus to start/stop.

Looking for help on that bit which sounds similar to what you are trying to do. Water floats are like $10 on eBay but I'm going to need a relay and something else for the cbus to trigger event.

Regards,


BenC

 

Water Leveling

Hi Everyone
I did a very (sort of) similar job to this one (a few years ago)

it required maintaining water levels across 3 underground tanks;
1 x 100,000Ltr (main tank)
2 x 20,000Ltr (secondary tanks)

all of the tanks were spread accross the particular block of land, which was also on a steep angle ( so no manifolds could be used for leveling )

The requirements we to pump (suck) from the main tank, fill the lower 2 tanks, and maintain a minimum level of 20%. Anything above 20% was natural rainfall. If lower tanks rose above 90% then the individual pumps would pump the water back out to the main tank until the lower tanks were at 80%
( allowing room for rainfall collection )

On top of this once the two lower tanks fell below 10% the water supply for the house would be switched back to Mains supply and the tanks would then start to "top up" from the larger tank untill they were at 20% capacity.

The system has been working perfectly now for about 4 years, all run from a B&W touchscreen.