cbcostanza
New member
I was wondering if we were still doing the auto-topoff workshop at this meeting?
Auto-topoff ath May meeting?
- Thread starter cbcostanza
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itZme
New member
Well, I was talking with John Janda and working on putting prices together to DIY an auto-top off system and set up a DIY workshop for members to each build their own. While searching for some parts on Ebay I found a person in Lorain building a nice, reasonably-priced auto top off unit.
The unit he offered us includes an optional 2nd float switch and an adjustable pump circuit timer that would limit the amount of time you allowed the top-off pump to run. say you have a 295gph pump and you only want to ever pump a maximimum of 1 gallon of RO or Kalk-water into your sump you would set the timer for 12 seconds and the pump is shut off when the float switch reaches the high point or 12 seconds whichever comes first.
This would virtually eliminate any chance of the pump overfilling your sump or dumping all your top off water into the tank and dropping salinity. I emailed him on behalf of the club and asked about a quantity discount and he said the unit that sells for $68 on his website PLUS an additional float switch ($10 more) for an upper-limit safety or reservoir filling shutoff could be ours for for $38 each if we could get an order of 25 together.
I have come up with a price to DIY them for right around $25 each and feel that, personally, I would rather just buy the pre-built one and not have to mess with any of the DIY stuff. I love to DIY but only if it is cost effective. In this case I would rather give my order for 2 units and pay for them.
If there are members still interested in DIY'ing one I don't mind doing that and leading the demo.
Here is his website
Here is the page for the item we can get for this price
Here are a couple of pics...
FRONT
BACK
The extra float switch is here... nothing exciting but very valuable
Float switch
Looks good to me and I am in for 2 units. Lets get a buy going. We could even get a few guys from some other local clubs in on it if they would like. He said this price was good for 25-30 units.
-- Kevin
The unit he offered us includes an optional 2nd float switch and an adjustable pump circuit timer that would limit the amount of time you allowed the top-off pump to run. say you have a 295gph pump and you only want to ever pump a maximimum of 1 gallon of RO or Kalk-water into your sump you would set the timer for 12 seconds and the pump is shut off when the float switch reaches the high point or 12 seconds whichever comes first.
This would virtually eliminate any chance of the pump overfilling your sump or dumping all your top off water into the tank and dropping salinity. I emailed him on behalf of the club and asked about a quantity discount and he said the unit that sells for $68 on his website PLUS an additional float switch ($10 more) for an upper-limit safety or reservoir filling shutoff could be ours for for $38 each if we could get an order of 25 together.
I have come up with a price to DIY them for right around $25 each and feel that, personally, I would rather just buy the pre-built one and not have to mess with any of the DIY stuff. I love to DIY but only if it is cost effective. In this case I would rather give my order for 2 units and pay for them.
If there are members still interested in DIY'ing one I don't mind doing that and leading the demo.
Here is his website
Here is the page for the item we can get for this price
Here are a couple of pics...
FRONT
BACK
The extra float switch is here... nothing exciting but very valuable
Float switch
Looks good to me and I am in for 2 units. Lets get a buy going. We could even get a few guys from some other local clubs in on it if they would like. He said this price was good for 25-30 units.
-- Kevin
I just want to clear up the info on this deal. The price of $38 is good for 30 - 40 units, and includes only 1 float switch, the other is optional and costs $6.50 .
I'm willing to open this group buy to any Ohio based reef club member
If there are members interested in any of the other units I sell (klasswasser unit) I'll still include them as a unit count but contact me for special pricing
Thanks for the intrest
Jeremy
I'm willing to open this group buy to any Ohio based reef club member
If there are members interested in any of the other units I sell (klasswasser unit) I'll still include them as a unit count but contact me for special pricing
Thanks for the intrest
Jeremy
itZme
New member
Not clearing things up ... making things more confusing
Not clearing things up ... making things more confusing
Well, it appears that things have changed and maybe we will have to purchase the parts and do a DIY for this. I am assuming that the previous poster is indeed the person that I have emailed about the auto-top off units although I have no way to verify this yet.
I would hope that nobody would create a new user account just to mess with us.
Since this was going to be a club group buy and I have had correspondence with the maker of these items I feel that I should mention a few things to maintain my credibility with all the members here.
Normaly I wouldn't do this in an open forum but it has to be done in order to show how things have progressed up to this point.
I saw the item for sale on an Ebay auction and thought to myself that they were selling for around $10 more than the DIY total. I then emailed the person on Ebay through the Ebay system and here is the exact copy/paste of my message sent on May-07.
>>> Hi,
I am a member of the Cleveland Saltwater Enthusiasts Association (C-SEA). The president of the club has been speaking to me about doing a DIY workshop to build a topoff system for members. I said it would be no problem and figured the cost of parts to DIY for each member. The total was right around $22. I suggested that we could contact you and ask if there was a quantity discount available for 25-30 units or if you would be interested in sponsoring the club in some way to help reduce the prices and gain some exposure for your business. We could pick them up also. If you were interested you could actually come and speak about the different ATO systems you have or just wait for us to submit an order. The one thing that we all wanted was an upper limit safety switch so the units we were going to build had 2 float switches. Please let me know if there is anything you could do for our local club (or we could do for you).
The club's site is www.c-sea.org
Thanks,
Kevin Dodson <<<
To that there was a reply recieved on May-07. Here it is in its entirety exactly copy/pasted from the emails I have:
>>> Hi Kevin, I myself was a meber a C-sea, but I never made it to any of the meetings so I let my menbership slip. The TopDose s+ fetures two float switch inputs, The first is for a nromal top off sensor (float switch) the second could be used for either High limit of the sump, or low level of a resivoir. I could do 25-30 units with two float switches included for around $38 a piece, This wouls be for the TopDose s+ (with the timer)
Hope that helps,
Jeremy Taylor <<<
I sent the information with all part numbers and prices of the 13 pieces needed to DIY these to John Janda on May-07 through an RC PM and asked if I should create a thread on our forums to let the members decide. On May-13 I received a PM from John telling me to go ahead with the proposed thread.
I don't know how that information I posted was turned into the information posted "The price of $38 is good for 30 - 40 units, and includes only 1 float switch, the other is optional and costs $6.50 ." but it seems that that's were we are now. I will email the person I have been corresponding to in order to verify the price change and that this is, indeed, the same person before we decide to go forward on the auto-top off thing.
I hope this isn't a last minute attempt to gather more sales and the only reason I posted about it was to get our members a deal on something that most of us need anyway. I hope the RC mods do not see this as a sales advertisement on my part and ban me since I was trying to get the info to the members so we could decide. I am NOT trying to drum up business for this person and if I were I would NOT have posted a price and then changed it later as I know this is a sure-fire way to turn people against you.
I will keep you all updated.
-- Kevin
Not clearing things up ... making things more confusing
Well, it appears that things have changed and maybe we will have to purchase the parts and do a DIY for this. I am assuming that the previous poster is indeed the person that I have emailed about the auto-top off units although I have no way to verify this yet.
I would hope that nobody would create a new user account just to mess with us.
Since this was going to be a club group buy and I have had correspondence with the maker of these items I feel that I should mention a few things to maintain my credibility with all the members here.
Normaly I wouldn't do this in an open forum but it has to be done in order to show how things have progressed up to this point.
I saw the item for sale on an Ebay auction and thought to myself that they were selling for around $10 more than the DIY total. I then emailed the person on Ebay through the Ebay system and here is the exact copy/paste of my message sent on May-07.
>>> Hi,
I am a member of the Cleveland Saltwater Enthusiasts Association (C-SEA). The president of the club has been speaking to me about doing a DIY workshop to build a topoff system for members. I said it would be no problem and figured the cost of parts to DIY for each member. The total was right around $22. I suggested that we could contact you and ask if there was a quantity discount available for 25-30 units or if you would be interested in sponsoring the club in some way to help reduce the prices and gain some exposure for your business. We could pick them up also. If you were interested you could actually come and speak about the different ATO systems you have or just wait for us to submit an order. The one thing that we all wanted was an upper limit safety switch so the units we were going to build had 2 float switches. Please let me know if there is anything you could do for our local club (or we could do for you).
The club's site is www.c-sea.org
Thanks,
Kevin Dodson <<<
To that there was a reply recieved on May-07. Here it is in its entirety exactly copy/pasted from the emails I have:
>>> Hi Kevin, I myself was a meber a C-sea, but I never made it to any of the meetings so I let my menbership slip. The TopDose s+ fetures two float switch inputs, The first is for a nromal top off sensor (float switch) the second could be used for either High limit of the sump, or low level of a resivoir. I could do 25-30 units with two float switches included for around $38 a piece, This wouls be for the TopDose s+ (with the timer)
Hope that helps,
Jeremy Taylor <<<
I sent the information with all part numbers and prices of the 13 pieces needed to DIY these to John Janda on May-07 through an RC PM and asked if I should create a thread on our forums to let the members decide. On May-13 I received a PM from John telling me to go ahead with the proposed thread.
I don't know how that information I posted was turned into the information posted "The price of $38 is good for 30 - 40 units, and includes only 1 float switch, the other is optional and costs $6.50 ." but it seems that that's were we are now. I will email the person I have been corresponding to in order to verify the price change and that this is, indeed, the same person before we decide to go forward on the auto-top off thing.
I hope this isn't a last minute attempt to gather more sales and the only reason I posted about it was to get our members a deal on something that most of us need anyway. I hope the RC mods do not see this as a sales advertisement on my part and ban me since I was trying to get the info to the members so we could decide. I am NOT trying to drum up business for this person and if I were I would NOT have posted a price and then changed it later as I know this is a sure-fire way to turn people against you.
I will keep you all updated.
-- Kevin
cbcostanza
New member
Count me in for 1 also. Thanks for the quick response to my thread.
itZme
New member
It seems that you guys are OK with buying these units instead of DIYing them at a meeting.
The price we have been quoted is including the second float switch. The only thing we need to know is how many and your name. If you guys would like to PM me with your name and quantity of units you would like I will keep this thread updated until we hit the 25 mark. Then we will have to worry about the money.
I have a Paypal account but I don't like to give them the extra few dollars just to transfer your money to me and then I take it and give it to someone else. We should get all the orders together then place the group order.
Right now we are at 5 units. I will post this on CORA and NORA with a link to this thread and try to keep it all organized here so there is no confusion.
Hope this gets rolling.
20 more to go...
-- Kevin
marinelife
Active member
I posted this on MASO so maybe you will get some more people in on it
CaveManNOhio
New member
How would you want us CORA Members to Pay? Pay Pal would be the best way for me. I would also be willing to make up the differance they charge you.
itZme
New member
cheelo I got your PM and ScottFarcuz I got yours too.
Takes us up to 13. Halfway!
Paypal would be fine but I don't want anyone to pay for them until we have enough in on the buy. If we don't make the cut-off for the price break I would hate to have to send funds back to the right people. I will see what the charges would be to Paypal the money here.
With CaveManNOhio we would be at 14 units.
Thanks marinelife for posting on MASO
-- Kevin
Takes us up to 13. Halfway!
Paypal would be fine but I don't want anyone to pay for them until we have enough in on the buy. If we don't make the cut-off for the price break I would hate to have to send funds back to the right people. I will see what the charges would be to Paypal the money here.
With CaveManNOhio we would be at 14 units.
Thanks marinelife for posting on MASO
-- Kevin
CaveManNOhio
New member
That's cool, let me know when you want the money. Thank you for including the CORA group on this group buy.
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