Advice? Near disaster/plumbing advice

it's been a rough few days. Was in Arkansas last week and had a tank sitter, came back last night to an almost dry return section and a mostly exposed heater. Glad it didn't shatter; got that taken care of and my son comes in this morning and says something's wrong with the tank.

I go downstairs and my display drain had fallen off the bulkhead and my stand was filled with water. I built it like a tub; caulked the seams and sealed it all so only a small amount of water actually made it to the floor, but alas I can't move the system to properly dry it. There's no puddles, just dampness. It should dry soon. About 4-5 gallons were in the stand. That's scary.

The GFCI had tripped since some electrical had submerged. Got all I could pulled apart and dried out. I used a hair dryer to be sure.

I run a Herbie overflow, so that pressure obviously contributed to helping my drain fall off. It's inch and a half vinyl hose to the gate, and vinyl gets brittle and hard after a while. So there's that, and I found my hose clamp had snapped. I'm not really sure as to the actual culprit.

I now have a heater in the display and all is good; sump water is in the brute and is heated, so things can ride a couple days if needed.

Anyway, all is cleaned up and dried that I can get to. I went and got the PVC to replumb the return line and drain. The return had a slow salt creep buildup from a couple of joints so while everything is out of the stand it's the best time to do it.

I'm putting in a manifold to feed a reactor I just got for Christmas and a future ATS, so I need advice with how to orient/plumb this thing.

I'm so glad this didn't happen earlier. We just got back last night. I have no idea what I'd have done trying to talk someone through all of this.

This post is now long enough, so I'll get some pics up here in a sec with details on what I'm thinking.

 

So here's one option. This will be fed off my return. I have plenty of flow in the DT, and these will be used to feed low flow devices. BP reactor and ATS primarily. The third is just there as an option, but I'm not sure I really need it but it's better to have it I think.

Oriented this way:


Or oriented this way:


I obviously have more room with them facing up, and can mount more securely with C clamps to the stand wall. BUT I don't like the outputs facing up. I just had a hose pop off, if that happens with them facing up water will be everywhere. Facing down and they either go back into the sump or the stand.

This is a mock up, isn't glued together yet, and things can be trimmed down as needed. What do you guys think?

 

Nice. So, will you have some space between your tees? Can the gates close all the way that close?

I went cheaper and did not get unions. That would be nice though.

 

Ok, looks like I need to get the nicer ball valves. I was hoping for a quick fix and to get back up and running tomorrow, but I should just do it right.

What do you guys think about upward facing outputs?

 

Thanks everyone for the input. There's a lot to chew on here. I was helping out my mother in law move some stuff today so not much happened with the tank.

I think I'm going to mount a board to the front of the 2x4s and make a more convenient place to mount my plumbing. I am going to order nicer ball valves. I like the idea the more I think about it. This will give me more room to work with and I'll like the end result better. It'll also better "aim" the manifold outputs into the sump. Just in case. I'm going to paint the PVC black as well. It'll look really nice when finished.

So, here's the deal I guess. I think I have the return and manifolds all planned out, but I'm starting to rethink my drain. I accidentally ordered my gate valve for the Herbie overflow a size too big for my drain the first time and used bushings to make it happen. Technically, a Herbie main drain should be smaller than the emergency drain. Well, mine is backwards from that because it's how I originally had my Durso setup. My bulkheads are 3/4" (originally supposed to be the return) and 1.25" for the drain.

If I switch the main drain to the 3/4" will I run into problems? I'll have the 1.25" drain as a back up, but we always want a bigger output than input so I'm curious to thoughts about this. Maybe I need different bulkheads? A 1" drain and the 1.25" as back up.. Problem is that swapping them out will be a pain I'm afraid. I don't have much room for the wrench given the current stand hole size. I'd maybe need to cut the hole bigger, but there's a full tank sitting above it.