Cavalina
Community Member
Hi Guys,
For years I have trudged over to my LFS once a month or more to refill my collection of 5 gallon jugs. But this will be coming to an end fairly soon -- later this week I will be receiving a 4 stage BRS Value Plus RODI unit. I plan on placing the unit under my utility sink in my mud room, and for the short term at least, producing water in 5 gallon increments, on demand to manually top off the fresh water when needed. For salt water, at least for the time being, I'll likely mix in these same 5 gallon jugs using a small power head.
But in the next month or so, I really want to construct a small but permanent mixing station.
Here's my use case: I need about 10 gallons of salt each week, and 10 gallons of fresh water. I will carry the water across the house, and I'm guessing it would be easiest to do that using the existing 5 gallon jugs.
I don't have a ton of space, but I do have three options in and around the mud room: 1) underneath the counter next to the utility sink, 2) in an adjacent closet where we currently have cat litter boxes, or 3) on the other side of the wall in the garage. Each has pros and cons which I'll list out in a moment, but first, here is a rough drawing of the space with measurements .....
Also, below is a picture of the space itself. You can see my water jugs competing with the cat food area at present (#1 in the diagram above). The door in the picture is to the closet and leads to #2 in the diagram above.
Here are the pros and cons to the three potential locations.....
1. Underneath the counter -- I can push the cat food out of here (for the most part) and take advantage of the fact that this is right next to the utility sink. The con though is that I don't have much vertical room to work with -- 40". That's still enough for side by side containers, or maybe even one on top of the other if I can find the right (small) size.
2. Closet -- this gives me more vertical room to work with, and would allow me to stack one container on top of another for a gravity feed. But... and this is a big but... I'd need to reconfigure the three cat litter boxes which sit directly in that space. My wife is not at all thrilled by this idea. I've tried to convince her that it would just mean moving the litter boxes back a bit in the closet, likely having them in front of the door. This approach might use up some of my "political capital" with her but I could perhaps go this route if it absolutely makes the most sense.
3. Garage -- I have some limited space on the other side of the wall in the garage. As my diagram shows, I have 28" of room to play with at present, but I could potentially push this to 32" or so if needed. I have unlimited vertical space here (tall garage), but to be honest, I'm a little reluctant to drill through the wall into the garage. Maybe this is a silly concern though.
So those are my three options guys. If you were in my shoes, which of the three would you choose? Thanks very much in advance for any guidance!!
For years I have trudged over to my LFS once a month or more to refill my collection of 5 gallon jugs. But this will be coming to an end fairly soon -- later this week I will be receiving a 4 stage BRS Value Plus RODI unit. I plan on placing the unit under my utility sink in my mud room, and for the short term at least, producing water in 5 gallon increments, on demand to manually top off the fresh water when needed. For salt water, at least for the time being, I'll likely mix in these same 5 gallon jugs using a small power head.
But in the next month or so, I really want to construct a small but permanent mixing station.
Here's my use case: I need about 10 gallons of salt each week, and 10 gallons of fresh water. I will carry the water across the house, and I'm guessing it would be easiest to do that using the existing 5 gallon jugs.
I don't have a ton of space, but I do have three options in and around the mud room: 1) underneath the counter next to the utility sink, 2) in an adjacent closet where we currently have cat litter boxes, or 3) on the other side of the wall in the garage. Each has pros and cons which I'll list out in a moment, but first, here is a rough drawing of the space with measurements .....
Also, below is a picture of the space itself. You can see my water jugs competing with the cat food area at present (#1 in the diagram above). The door in the picture is to the closet and leads to #2 in the diagram above.
Here are the pros and cons to the three potential locations.....
1. Underneath the counter -- I can push the cat food out of here (for the most part) and take advantage of the fact that this is right next to the utility sink. The con though is that I don't have much vertical room to work with -- 40". That's still enough for side by side containers, or maybe even one on top of the other if I can find the right (small) size.
2. Closet -- this gives me more vertical room to work with, and would allow me to stack one container on top of another for a gravity feed. But... and this is a big but... I'd need to reconfigure the three cat litter boxes which sit directly in that space. My wife is not at all thrilled by this idea. I've tried to convince her that it would just mean moving the litter boxes back a bit in the closet, likely having them in front of the door. This approach might use up some of my "political capital" with her but I could perhaps go this route if it absolutely makes the most sense.
3. Garage -- I have some limited space on the other side of the wall in the garage. As my diagram shows, I have 28" of room to play with at present, but I could potentially push this to 32" or so if needed. I have unlimited vertical space here (tall garage), but to be honest, I'm a little reluctant to drill through the wall into the garage. Maybe this is a silly concern though.
So those are my three options guys. If you were in my shoes, which of the three would you choose? Thanks very much in advance for any guidance!!
