Hass Intellifaucet Installation

[Luis-F-S]

I've had a number of inquiries as to why I have 3 line feeds to my Hass Intellifaucet K-250, so I thought I'd explain it. You have to remember I'm in Louisiana where the water gets pretty warm during the summer (often the "cold" side is over 80 deg F. when it comes out the tap).

The three lines to the K-250 are as follows: On the right (cold side of the K-250) is a single chilled line that comes from an Elkay 32 GPH water cooled chiller. During the winter months when it's cold, I don't turn on the chiller and just use the cold water as it comes out of the tap and flows through the chiller as long as it's 68 Deg or colder for the "cold" feed to the K-250.

On the left side (hot side of the K-250), are both hot (from the water heater) and the regular cold taps. During the summer, the "cold" tap comes in around 80 Deg, so I use it as the "hot" source for the faucet and then use the chilled line (at 55 Deg) as the cold. That way, I only use a little "chilled" water to cool the regular tap from say 80 deg to 68 Deg. If I were to use the "hot" tap from the water heater that comes in at 120 Deg F, I'd use a lot more of the "chilled" water and my chilled water would not last as long. Remember that when you have a 32 GPH chiller, at 1 GPM you could run out of chilled water pretty quickly. By using this arrangement, I've never had that problem.

If you live where the "cold" tap always comes in at 70 or less, then you don't need to use a chiller or this arrangement and you can use a single line for each hot & cold. The wet side setup is shown in the first photo. There are four spigots off the white pec line off the Intellifaucet that feed a print washer, wash tray and film washer as needed. There is also a hot/cold faucet for normal use/cleanup. Hope this helps.



Elkay EWR32 water cooled chiller with the insulated piping in the wall outside the darkroom:



The two vertical lines to the left are the Hot & Cold lines coming in. The Hot splits and goes to the "hot" side of the K250 and also to a Delta faucet over the sink. The Cold splits and goes also to the Delta faucet, the "hot" side of the K-250 and the chiller. The Chiller has two feeds and one side goes to the compressor water coolant in (remember, it's a water cooled chiller) with the compressor out to the drain, and the other side to the Chilled water in. The chilled out goes to the "cold" side of the K-250 which feeds four faucets over the sink. A piping diagram is shown below:

[Cletus]

Yeah, you just just posted this to make all us guys in hot climates (and everywhere else too) jealous about what a nice darkroom plumbing setup you have!

[Luis-F-S]

Actually, the plumbing drove the entire darkroom design because I could not have built it where it is if I could not get the water in and the drain out. The sink drain line travels in a "U" around and through a base cabinet to get to a small pump station at the other side of the room that also picks up a utility sink. This has since been updated to where the drain gravity flows to the city sewerage. The water supply was well water that is filtered before it splits to go to the water heater, thus using a single filter. I've since ran the house (potable) water to the darkroom and the filter no longer serves a purpose since the potable water does not have particulates that need to be removed. Here's a shot of the area with the blue expansion tank for the well pump on the right, the white water heater in the middle, and the blue pump tank to the left under the sink.

[Luis-F-S]

Ginette, here's the plumbing layout. If you don't need the chiller skip the branches to it, and just run the cold to the cold side of the mixing valve. Only the hot would go to the hot side of the MV. You can see how the line from the pressure tank goes through the filter before it splits to the water heater. That way you only need a single water filter. You may need to clean it more often, but you can use the cheaper "cold" filters. You really want a plain hot/cold faucet for general clean up and to make life simple. L

[Luis-F-S]

Since posting this I have installed a dedicated gravity drain line so no longer need the small pump and basin if anyone needs it just pm me. It works great if your drain line is above your darkroom drain.