Major disaster barely avoided

[alpenreef]

Currently setting up a IM 170gal + 75gal sump. Did all the plumbing and filled it with rodi yesterday. I had the return pump run the last 24 hours or so, to mix salt and heat the water.
Just as I was about to leave the house for an errant, the return hose slipped off the pump and the pump was gushing water out the sump everywhere. 5 minutes later and I wouldn’t have heard that. 220+ gallons would have emptied onto the floors.
So, I didn’t think I would need a controller right away - I guess I was wrong.
What I would like to happen is: wet floor -> shut down everything and text me. My wallet is already on fire - but I need to make sure this won’t happen again (besides securing the hose properly).
I am looking at a basic hydros with a leak detector. Or maybe I need to suck it up and buy a Profilux. That was my plan for down the road once I recovered financially from buying into the ecotech/vortech ecosystem.

 

[JGT]

Or hard pipe your plumbing. Cheaper and bullet proof.

 

[alpenreef]

Or hard pipe your plumbing. Cheaper and bullet proof.

Oh trust me, that hose will never come off the pump again. But what other failure points/scenarios am I not aware of. Hence the need for monitoring.
Btw, the hard pipe plumbing came that way with the Innovative Marine set. The pvc pipe is unioned to the sump, that last little bit to the pump is rubber.

 

[n2585722]

The Hydros can do that for you. It is also expandable so what you get now you can just add to it as you go. I have a collective of 14 controllers. There are 4 leak detectors on the system but I have things in the garage and also 35ft away at the tank. It also controls my RODI and mixing station. your best bet would be a Pro Pack since those come with either a X3 or X4 and a XP8. The XP8 is a controller with 8 AC outputs on it you can control individually. They also have power monitoring on them when powered so you can setup an alert if the power usage goes out of the range you setup. The Pro Pack comes with a command bus cable and 2 terminators so you can connect the XP8 to the other controller and create a collective. It also comes with a pH probe and temp sensor. The difference in the X3 and X4 is the X3 has 1 probe port and 2 sense ports. The temp sensor would use on sense port and the pH probe would use the probe port so that would leave only the one sense port but you could use it with either of the leak detectors. The X4 has 2 probe ports, 4 sense ports and 4 0-10v inputs on one connector. For outputs it has 2 drive ports which are 12v outputs for things like dosing pump and small pumps such as an ATO pump. It can also power 12v solenoids. it also has 4 0-10v outputs on one connector. These can be used to control pumps and lighting that has 0-10v control inputs. To expand just get a controller with the inputs and outputs you need to add and a command bus cable. You just power down the system and take off a terminator and connect the command bus cable between the new controller and where you removed the terminator, Then install the terminator on the remaining command bus port on the new controller. Then you power back up and register the controller and setup wifi credentials. Then check to see if it has current firmware. Then you can add it to your collective in the app. A collective is basically a virtual controller made up of its member controllers. All inputs and outputs are shared with the collective so you can control an output on one controller with an input on another controller. It acts like one large controller.

 

[DanTheReefer]

Or hard pipe your plumbing. Cheaper and bullet proof.

The manufacturers typically make the returns soft to dampen the pump noise

 

[DanTheReefer]

Currently setting up a IM 170gal + 75gal sump. Did all the plumbing and filled it with rodi yesterday. I had the return pump run the last 24 hours or so, to mix salt and heat the water.
Just as I was about to leave the house for an errant, the return hose slipped off the pump and the pump was gushing water out the sump everywhere. 5 minutes later and I wouldn’t have heard that. 220+ gallons would have emptied onto the floors.
So, I didn’t think I would need a controller right away - I guess I was wrong.
What I would like to happen is: wet floor -> shut down everything and text me. My wallet is already on fire - but I need to make sure this won’t happen again (besides securing the hose properly).
I am looking at a basic hydros with a leak detector. Or maybe I need to suck it up and buy a Profilux. That was my plan for down the road once I recovered financially from buying into the ecotech/vortech ecosystem.

I know there are WiFi leak sensors on Amazon, may be worth exploring if you don’t want to shell out on a controller yet