Well, let's see...what has been going on since my last update. I did get a new charger for my battery drill, so it is back in action again.
That Luft pump from Coralife did arrive and is a good air pump...for a hobby style diaphragm pump. It does pump as much or more air through it's single outlet with one lime wood diffuser as the Tetra-Tec DW24 does through both outlets with a lime wood diffuser on each outlet. The Luft easily has enough pressure to reach the bottom of the skimmers and then some, but so does the Tetra DW model. Both air pumps seem to be adequate for the application, the difference being only one lime wood diffuser is needed for the Luft pump. It would take about two years of running and changing only one lime wood diffuser per skimmer per month, as opposed to changing two diffusers per skimmer per month, to make up the cost difference. That is assuming either/both diaphragm style pumps will last for two years. I am still checking into the linear pumps to be able to supply multiple skimmers from one pump.
I did order some shade cloth for the greenhouse. I am using a 30% cloth over the entire greenhouse and another 30% cloth on the north end. That end is where the furnace, RODI filters, slop sink, live rock vat, and most of the water prep barrels are sitting. The water temp in the live rock vat and the black tub has dropped about 4 degrees when compared to the ambient temp. Of course, when it gets hot, the water temp is still too high. The hottest the water temp has been since putting on the shade cloth is 88. The ambient air temp right now (middle and end of July, 2005) is higher than it has been all year and the humidity is terrible. Yesterday, (7-21-05) the ambient air temp was 89, but the humidity was so high, the heat index was 102. The water temp had been getting up to 92 on some days before putting on the shade cloth. There is still plenty of light available inside the greenhouse. Remember, the water temp will only stay about 8 degrees below the air temp. The air temp inside the greenhouse is roughly 15 degrees higher than the outside air temp when all of the fans are running. If I shut off all of the fans, it can get to 140+ very easily. (Remember from last winter, outside temps in the teens and twenties, greenhouse temp in the 80's and 90's without the furnace running.)
The first blower (the one that had the melt down) has been repaired and sent back to me. After a period of waiting - complaining - more waiting - more intense complaining, they even paid for the return shipping. It is in place and did get an initial test. It was running for about six hours with the two bleed valves wide open and all of the outlets wide open with no appreciable heat gain. Then I closed the bleed valves and let it run for another two hours with just the outlets open and it was still fine, not hot to the touch, just comfortably warm. Lesson to all, don't try to push air from a blower through a lime wood diffuser to the bottom of a five foot tall skimmer. If the blower is too hot to touch, it is being overloaded and will eventually fail. Anyway, I will only use the blower to bubble in the airlift tubes for tank circulation and in the water prep barrels for aeration. At some point, I may add some lift tubes to the live rock vat to help circulation once I get a raised platform in the vat to keep the rock off of the bottom.
The transmission in my Blazer decided it had had enough. Reverse stopped working and I don't think it was shifting into the overdrive either. It took eight days for the dealer to get a new transmission and get it changed. Really a terrible and unsatisfying experience filled with lies and broken promises. I don't know how people who treat their customers like that can stay in business. Some day, all of this bad luck has got to run out. I do have to say thanks to my sister-in-law who loaned me one of her vehicles during that time.
The iron removal system has been installed. In the pic below, you can see the black water line that goes out to the greenhouse has been cut and white flexible pvc tube runs over to the system and back to the black line. The short unit is the oxidation tank. Water comes into it first. It sucks in air through a venturi so it always has a pressurized air space at the top of the canister where the water enters. The air starts the oxidation of the iron. Keeping the air pressurized accelerates the oxidation process. There are 500 free-floating baffles to keep the air/water mixture churned up. Next is 100 pounds of calcite which elevates the pH of the water and further accelerates the oxidation. Then there is 50 pounds of some kind of gravel to start filtering the rust and ensures a steady even flow of water out of the first canister to the second. The taller canister is the filter tank. It has 20 pounds of gravel, 20 pounds of coarse garnet, 32 pounds of fine garnet, 70 pounds of greensand, and 12 pounds of anthracite to filter the oxidized iron (rust). Sorry Chris, no carbon.
This morning (7-22-05) I woke up at 6:20 am. After I flushed the toilet, the toilet tank wasn't filling and the water pressure in the house was very weak. I went into the cellar to see if I could find something wrong and found that the short canister was stuck in the backwash mode. We had some storms last night so I thought maybe the power flashing off and on might have affected the timers. By 9:00 am, it was still back flushing (at 8 gallons per minute) and the toilet tank still wasn't full. That canister is set to start back flushing at 2:00 am. I didn't think it should take seven hours or more to back flush this system, so I called Hick's to come check it out. The tech who installed it came right over and played with everything for awhile. He thinks the timer wheel was too tight and wasn't letting it turn properly. He adjusted it and turned the timer manually to run it through several cycles and thinks it should be good to go now. The way my luck has been running lately, I'll be surprised if the thing doesn't explode today. I think I'll give it a few days to break in before I run anything through my brand new prefilters and RO membranes.
I am starting to get excited again. Now the facility is back to where it was in January the last time I was getting excited about setting this whole project up.
