First flood

[Gatorfreak]

The water level sensor for my auto-topoff setup decided to let the water keep on coming. So the sump overflowed and probably about a gallon went out into the stand and made its way onto the carpet underneath. Salinity went from 1.024 to 1.020. I guess it could've been worse.

No more auto-topoff for me. I'm not trusting those things anymore. I'll just flip the topoff pump on for a minute each day. I don't know what I'll do next time I go out of town.

 

[Scatcat]

Put in on a timer so it will only fill for so many minutes them shut off. You were lucky it could have been so much worst than that.

 

[klam]

Ahhhh!! Samething happened to me. My auto-top off switch stuck and dumped a lot of water into my tank. My salinity level dropped. water was everywhere and my carpets got soaked. Good thing I hung my power stripes or a fire might of started.

I said I wasn't go to use a top-off anymore also but I'm using it again. The thing I'm doing differently now is only filling the top-off water container with enough water just for a day so when it gets stuck not a lot of water will overflow the tank.

I feel your pain

 

[RLG2182]

8O 8O

I'm making one this weekend! I'll document it and see how it goes. I'm going to put it on a timer as well... hopefully I won't end up with a 2nd story appartment with a serious leak.

 

[Gatorfreak]

I did have it on a timer. Problem was that the timer's smallest increment is 15 minutes... which is plenty of time for my pump to empty the entire 18 gallon topoff container. I guess if I had one that only ran for 1 minute, that would work. I think the sensor needs to be cleaned and rinsed regularly.

 

[RLG2182]

You can also have the topoff pump go into a spray bar... that way, it only trickles water into your sump slowly... not a steady flow.

 

[Gatorfreak]

Yeah, restricting the flow to slow it down is a good idea.

 

[Kam]

First, sorry to hear.

I am in the process of designing a 120 system and want to incorporate an auto top-off. I was thinking about a dual sensor system in the sump. One to sense low water and turn on the pump which would then shut off when the water got high enough and a second for high which would be "on" all the time when the water was low but would shut off the pump when the water got too high.

Hopefully (key word here) both sensors would not get stuck at the same time.

 

[ellisz]

Put a second float in line with the first. I have a high level float so if the pump keeps going and reaches the high float, it will kill the power of the top off pump.

I could have a low salinity issue if it happens on a day I filled the top off but it **SHOULD** never over flow. My sump will hold my top off contents anyway. 75 gal sumps are nice for that