I could really use some help in brainstorming a simple idea to help make this work.

Basically I have a large open drain that can not drain as fast as the waste water that is being put into it. So that it does not fill and overflow all over the floor I have installed a sump pump and ran a garden hose from the sump pump in the drain outside to another drain that drains without a problem. Now this waste water pretty much runs into this drain 24/7 except for a random day out of the week the system is shut down, and the sump pump will turn off because of the internal float switch. Now that winter is approaching I am afraid that the garden hose will freeze on a day that the water stops flowing so my goal is to make it running all the time even if the waste water system is not running that day. I am going to achieve this by having a solenoid valve on a water source in the building that opens to feed water in this drain when ever the system is shut down. And to sense when the system is shut down I will have a flow switch on an output hose of the system.

I assume a reed switch based flow switch should be fine, and the solenoid valve I have, an Orbit Model 27757, which I know is 2 pin and 24 volts is applied to one of the pins and ground the other to open, and reversed to close. Now I assume it would not be good to have a constant power running to it, and that it needs to be a momentary pulse of power, so I am looking for a simple way to do this.

I have a picture to try and better explain what I would like to do, and I would like to do it with as few components as possible and all from 24v power source, I considered a microcontroller but then I need to figure out implementing how to input and output proper voltages.



Thank you

 

Are you sure that valve is not powered on to open and simply power off to close?
BTW that did not get a very good feedback report.
Max.

 

I'd insulate the portion of the hose you think might freeze. Or replace that section with a metal pipe and put a thermostatically controlled pipe heater on it.

 

I love when people come up with complicated "workarounds" instead of just fixing the real simple problem in the first place.
Any reason you don't just fix the slow drain.. Double up the drains/convert to siphon drain/slow the feed water source,etc...

And don't forget to build for redundancy.. (dual flow switches,etc..)
What happens IF the reed switch fails?
What if x?
What if y?

 

1) Everybody that used that valve hates it.

https://www.orbitonline.com/product...-watering/valve/yard-watering-kit-valve/27757

2) You don't have to apply reverse polarity to close it.
3) You can arrange the pipes so the garden hose never goes outside, but dumps into a pipe (inside the building) which runs downhill.

Friggin' Arduino Effect!
"I'm too lazy or cheap to fix my plumbing, so I need a microprocessor."

 

You're peeing a lot of water down the drain in lieu of more thought: electric pipe heater tape, gravity feed (you already have the pump), etc. I get that fixing the original drain is not the preferred solution because it might involve jack hammering up a section of floor or something equally painful/expensive. I vote for the gravity feed.

ak

 

The real fix will be to clean out the drain, which I understand, but it has been attempted and failed, so the drain pipe is being replaced next spring. Before then we are tryting to make a quick bandage to the system so that the floors are flooding and freezing in the winter because of the obvious hazard of that. Heating the hose is an option, but after research I would need to heat all 150 ft of the hose that is outdoor and it would be incredibly expensive to do so.

 

What about slowing down or diverting feed water?
Where is the feed water coming from?

 

There is the water inlet coming into the building, it has a hose with a regulator going to the plant, and another port to be used with a garden hose if needed for cleaning or what ever. The water is used to spray into a vacuum blower that vacuumes air out of tanks, it creats a water seal and it cools the blower. I can not change how much water flows into this, it needs a certain amount.

 

I would obtain a quality irrigation sprinkler system valve rather than that particular choice.
Max.

 

And here I assumed "plant" equals house plant..
I thought this was some hydroponic setup..

Now its even worse..
An industrial application that intends to use household sprinkler components..
I'm out....

 

I would do a normal sprinkler system setup with a timer, but the issue is I will not have any idea when the plant will stop running so I cant set an actual timer. I thought there would be a simple way to have a flow switch determing when a solenoid valve should be open or not.