Gayflower: 2024 water system and 2025 potential improvements

Reference Photo:

0. Plywood backing

Get a fairly large piece of plywood to serve as backing for all the gear that is mounted on the rear wall here - the spider box, the control box, the electronic things, and, in the future, the plumbing stack for the pump outlet.

1. IBC Tote Replacement

• New totes will be ordered from The Cary Company for delivery to Empire
  • The existing PVC-based connection between the totes and the pump in the front is too fragile.
  • The connection in the back is too thin, since the harbor freight pump wants 1" diameter intake.
• Here's a sketch of my current thinking for new plumbing between the totes:

Each tote comes with a 2" camlock valve. Our tote vendor, Cary, can provide an adapter to 3/4" garden hoses.

At this adapter we install an extra inline valve so it's easy to turn on and off.

We use short, standard, 3/4" garden hoses (1' - 5' depending on situation) - readily available from Amazon.

The "tee" connection is designed to combine two hoses as one 1" NPT. It would combine:

• a 1" Female x 1" Female x 1" Male NPT tee pipe (make sure to get actual NPT)
• with two 3/4" GHT Female x 1" Male NPT adapters

Because the intake for the pump wants 1", and each tote is constrained via a garden hose fitting to only 3/4 of an inch, we need to open at least two totes at a time to provide enough water flow.

Once everything is scaled up to 1" NPT, we'll use Aeromixer 1" hoses. These have the benefit of handling a lot of water flow and being highly flexible. 

2. Evaporative Cooler Supply Rerouting

The water supply line for the evaporative cooler should be rerouted so it does not interfere with that IBC tote. Also, it might be responsible for the leak at the top of the pump.

• The existing line is almost certainly 1/4" copper tubing
• There is poly tubing available in 50' lengths and also 50' copper. This will certainly be long enough.
• This and this are probably the valves we need to hook it up to the supply side.
• Get some extra compression fittings.

With all this in hand we should be able to replace the supply line to the swamp cooler.

3. Make pump easily replaceable

Currently the pump is plumbed with PVC and glue for both input and output.

• Once we complete step 1 (replacing the IBC totes), the input will be coming from a 1" NPT hose that can screw directly into the pump with just some teflon tape, so this side can be easily replaced.

Need to figure out how to change the output side so it too is using an easily replaceable NPT hose, or maybe sharkbite fittings.