Well I have another little problem. I knew the bottom sump was too small after the first time I unplugged my main return pumps and the water from the display overwhelmed the bottom sump and dumped ~10g down the emergency drain. I had two power outages yesterday and each time it left my lower sump pump running half dry and emptied my ATO pail into the system. Now the ATO pail is currently only a 5g pail so it wasn't an issue but I made a promise to myself to not compromise anything in this project. So, I will need to build a larger bottom sump that can handle that extra volume. Right now the lower sump is 14 deep x 48 wide x 12 3/8 to the emergency overflow. That works out to ~36g. I need to up it to ~50g. SO I need to add ~14g of capacity. The stand itself can accomodate another 2" of sump to the front. I don't really want to go any taller and can't go any wider.
If I get a new sump made that is 5" deeper front to back that will add ~12.9g of volume which should be enough. That would also require me to build an add-on to the bottom of the sump stand to support the extra 3" of sump overhang.
Wendy suggested a sensor and pump that would start draining the lower sump when it got to a certain level and while I like that idea I know it would be fairly complex to work out not to mention the problem occurs when the power goes out so all the programming in the world isn't going to help at that moment. I honestly think a larger bottom sump is my safest & simplest solution. Any opinions or suggestions?
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