DIY Project DIY Water Changer, No more buckets!!

[Stu Worrall]

Re: My Water Changer

cheers LD, might get one of them

 

[Wilis]

Re: My Water Changer

Hi All- My mixer shower water changer: (apologies if it's been done before I took some pics n these are the first I've tried to upload to the site!)
Luckily for me opposite the room in which I have my biggest tank is a shower room with a mixer shower, for a while now I'd been syphoning the water out with a hose(shower tray being lower than the tank) & then filling 25L buckets with water of the correct temp & treated with dechlor & pumping them in to the tank with a 600lph hydor power head & the hose from my gravel vac, this however is only on a 180L tank & I was concerned about the effort it would take to do a 50% change on my new 380L!

After seeing the python I asked one of my best mates, a plumber to rig something up for me so that I could attach the hose to the mixer shower to fill the tank back up. Mixers being ideal as by the time you've run the water to gauge the correct temp any water sat in the copper pipe will have gone down the drain-even better in new builds as they're mostly being plumbed in HEP (plastic) these days.

He took a normal male 'hozelock' type fitting & with the help of a little ptfe attached it to a threaded piece of pipe-the kind which you would find on a shower head that's built in to the wall, my hose has the female 'hozelock fitting on.
The 'gadget'

The gadget fitted to the shower hose in place of the spray head

you get the idea...

(oh this last pic is just a handy velcro tie,also from B&Q, i use to keep my hose tidy as I just cut the length i need n put the rest in the shed)

Now all I have to do is:
1. Turn off my external pumps, this prevents any chlorinated water going through the filters! :idea:
2. Syphon the water out of the tank then
3. Take the shower head off the hose - screw on the new attachment
4. Get the water to the right temp
5. Plug in the hose-tank fills up-unplug hose
6. Dechlorinate the tank & switch the filters back on

It's good to fit an inline tap, as mentioned in previous replies, on the hose to stop too much water going in/out of the tank & means you can control it from the tank end also.
Good water pressure means 80L out, 80L in takes around 20 mins in all so I reckon on doing my new tank in just over 30 mins!

Materials needed were 1 B&Q value hose,inline tap, some ptfe tape (should have from C02 reg connections anyway), a male n female hose connector & a fitting with a shower hose size thread on it-available from all good plumbcentre type places - cobble them together n hey presto £20 (ish) later, hours saved a week n back saved for life!
Good to have finally remembered my login details for photobucket!
Any questions about parts I'll give you my mates number
Regards
Will

 

[LondonDragon]

Re: My Water Changer

Thanks Will, another great idea how to attach the hose to the tap

 

[aaronnorth]

Re: My Water Changer

how far do you think one of those pumps (285l) would pump out some water? I would need it about 10metres. What size pump would you say i would need?

Thanks.

 

[LondonDragon]

Re: My Water Changer

how far do you think one of those pumps (285l) would pump out some water? I would need it about 10metres. What size pump would you say i would need?
Thanks.

My hose is about 10m too and I empty half of my Rio 125 in 7 minutes.

 

[aaronnorth]

Re: My Water Changer

how far do you think one of those pumps (285l) would pump out some water? I would need it about 10metres. What size pump would you say i would need?
Thanks.

My hose is about 10m too and I empty half of my Rio 125 in 7 minutes.

so i would need about 500l pump which would empty my 180l in about <15mins.

what type of hose do you use?

 

[LondonDragon]

Re: My Water Changer

so i would need about 500l pump which would empty my 180l in about <15mins.
what type of hose do you use?

All depends if the diameter of the hose can handle the flow, but a higher pump most likely will improve the speeds, I just use normal garden hose. Similar to this:

That can take Hozelock adapters.

 

[aaronnorth]

Re: My Water Changer

thats good then, i expected to be paying out for the tubing which is a clear plastic (like eheim)

 

[Simon D]

Re: My Water Changer

LD, Many thanks for your advice on this

I've just got my auto water changer up and running. It's great, now the weekly water changes aren't such a daunting prospect ( I actually look foreward to getting th hosepipe out and not loads of buckets) time is definately saved. It's the future!!!

Kind regards

Simon

 

[LondonDragon]

Re: My Water Changer

Good to hear Simon, water changes made simple, its even more simple if you can actually leave the hose in place all the time, if you can do some plumbing to hide it

 

[Simon D]

Re: My Water Changer

Permanent piping is not an option unfortunately (unless I want to get divorced). But this is not a problem. as the tank is not a milliion miles from the kitchen. My other tank is upstairs and my mixer tap connection does not fit the bath mixer so need one of those shower head converters! I can still use the out-flow of the pump, just means filling with buckets at the moment.

 

[Simon D]

Re: My Water Changer

No plumber required:

I'll try this again, just typed it all out and system went down!

I've just sourced a shower head converter from plumbcentre £3.50 (as above) the piece inside the hose is a smooth outlet pipe in brass and I had to soften the hosepipe in boiling water to make it malable enough to fit. The Jubilee Clip is just belt and braces.

I can use LD's idea of mixer tap converter in my main tank downstairs, but for another tank upstairs, I needed to utilise the bath mixer tap and the mixer is too big for the converter. I nicked Will's idea for the shower hose adapter with great results.

It all depends on your auto-water-changer configuration, but I needed a female hose attachment so came up with this. If it helps one person, I'll be a happy man.

It's the future!

 

[LondonDragon]

Re: My Water Changer

Nice one Simon thanks for sharing

 

[Simon D]

Re: My Water Changer

Nice one Simon thanks for sharing

always a pleasure, as I said, if it helps just one person.......

 

[Egmel]

Re: My Water Changer

No plumber required:

This looks like just what I need, any idea what I should be searching for? I found the site but couldn't find the shower head converter.

 

[Simon D]

Re: My Water Changer

HI Egmel,

All you have to do is unscrew the shower head from the hose and fit this instead! See page 7 0f this thread by Wilis (I adapted [nicked] his idea.

Most plumbing merchants should be able to supply you the part. I'm not a plumber so just printed the picture and took it into my local PlumbCentre, they were very helpful. From memory its a half inch fitting.

If that doesn't make sense let me know and I'll go into more detail. of how it works and fits.

 

[Egmel]

Re: My Water Changer

Ok, now to find a plumbers place within cycling distance, I might just start with B&Q!

 

[mr. luke]

Re: My Water Changer

i have a similar method, that cost about £10 maybe less.
-hose in tank at height you want the water to go down too.
-suck the oposite end
-chuck it down the drain
-watch the tv for a bit
-stick in your decholrinator and add wqater of a similar temperature from a mixer tap, so wimilar process, without all the y connectors and pumps though

 

[Egmel]

Re: My Water Changer

i have a similar method, that cost about £10 maybe less.
-hose in tank at height you want the water to go down too.
-suck the oposite end
-chuck it down the drain
-watch the tv for a bit
-stick in your decholrinator and add wqater of a similar temperature from a mixer tap, so wimilar process, without all the y connectors and pumps though

This is what I was planning on doing, though I want to be able to connect it to the shower rather than a mixer tap.

I'm also going to run it through a net when draining to catch any inquisitive shrimp

I wont be sucking on any pipes, just starting the siphon going with the dunking method! For those who've never done this, you put a largish amount of hose in the tank, getting rid of any air bubbles, put you finger over the end under the water and lift the hose up vertically keeping the end in the water, you then drop the body of the hose over the side of the tank (so the water in it is below the water level of the tank) and take your finger off the end. It requires a bit of practice but I've always found it preferable to sucking on the end of a hose full of fish tank water!

 

[Stu Worrall]

Re: My Water Changer

ive done a similar thing with mine that was prompted from this thread. setup a hose to put water into the tank after emptying into cans then of course realised the sink was under the tank in height so have started drawing off with this method and no need for a pump. Ive got a course net tie clipped to the hose in the water and put it through a net in the sink. caught 3 baby shrimp last time i did it that were trying to escape to the drain a la finding nero style. didnt fancy their chances in the sewage system though!