Power outages

[Mark666]

For you that have a sump/Refugium under the tank. What do you have in place to prevent overflow during a power outage? Overflow boxes?

 

[lmforbis]

There should be plenty of empty space in the sump to handle all the water that drains down if power is lost. For that reason you don’t want your over flow near the bottom of the tank. Mine is about 60% full when I turn off the return pump the sump can handle the extra water volume.

 

[beaslbob]

My thoughts in your other thread:. LOL

Just as a reminder on setting up a sump:

1) insure and test that no floods occur with power outage. Upper container should stop draining before sump floods.

2) Insure and test that no floods occur and normal operation returns when the power returns.

3) and the one I forgot in my first setup LOL. Insure and test that no floods occur for drain/overflow failure (blockage, siphon break etc). The sump should run dry before the upper container floods.

And keep in mind (that should you add) an automatic top off will pump in water during a drain failure. So this is like 3 above. A drain failure, upper container level rises, sump lowers, ato kicks in and so on. Have some kind of sensor that turns off the auto top off before the upper container floods.