plumbing advice needed

[monotrememan]

i am setting up a 350gal or so tank, roughly 84Lx36Wx30H. there will be a sump underneath the tank, with a refugium etc and two ATO tanks. one ATO tank will be fresh water (for top-off) and one will be salt water (i plan to do a few gallons a day of salt water per day water exchange). this will be managed by a AutoAqua Smart AWC Duo device. so far, so good.

the issue is that the bins (with the water and salt water) driving this will be in the garage 60ft away. there is a crawlspace between the dining (er, tank) room and the garage. so my thought is to run a 2-3in tube from the garage to the tank room. the tube will contain 3 1in pipes (fresh water garage->tank, salt water garage->tank, waste water tank->garage) and one or two 20A electric lines (from a subpanel in the garage; avoiding a lack of useful outlets in the tank room). the plan would be use ATOs to top off the ATO tanks in the samp.

any comments? (ignore the issue of the electric circuits being inside the main pipe.)

 

[Johnd651]

What will be the difference in height? The pumps that come with it are rated for 8ft head pressure. Also, 1in line at 60 ft is 2.4 gallons. Willthat gravity drain into the sump? Not impossible just need more detail on height difference and pipes routing, since bends create head pressure as well.

 

[DanTheReefer]

what material are you planning for water pipes? Recommend hard material (PVC) due to length of run, maybe like a mini split drain. If strictly for an ATO you should be ok with or even desire lower flow, so I may even try a cheap amazon pump to see how things are looking, adjustable DC pump could be handy as well.

Sounds like you knew somebody would say this but I strongly advise against running electrical in the same conduit as the water as this could have life changing consequences.

 

[monotrememan]

What will be the difference in height? The pumps that come with it are rated for 8ft head pressure. Also, 1in line at 60 ft is 2.4 gallons. Willthat gravity drain into the sump? Not impossible just need more detail on height difference and pipes routing, since bends create head pressure as well.

difference in height would be of the order of 3-4 feet

 

[monotrememan]

what material are you planning for water pipes? Recommend hard material (PVC) due to length of run, maybe like a mini split drain. If strictly for an ATO you should be ok with or even desire lower flow, so I may even try a cheap amazon pump to see how things are looking, adjustable DC pump could be handy as well.

Sounds like you knew somebody would say this but I strongly advise against running electrical in the same conduit as the water as this could have life changing consequences.

i had planned on flexible hose. i think a hard pipe would be awkward to engineer. is there a reason against flexible hose (such as clogging)?

 

[Johnd651]

over the length of your run it will have sags and bends and twists. it will create some back pressure in the line from them compared to a rigid pipe, which would only have that at the direction change

 

[DanTheReefer]

i had planned on flexible hose. i think a hard pipe would be awkward to engineer. is there a reason against flexible hose (such as clogging)?

I was thinking a hard, flexible PVC tube (usually find them clear) would be a good compromise between needing flexibility and minimizing friction losses/ having a kink you cant see.

 

[DanTheReefer]

i had planned on flexible hose. i think a hard pipe would be awkward to engineer. is there a reason against flexible hose (such as clogging)?

I was thinking a hard, flexible PVC tube (usually find them clear) would be a good compromise between needing flexibility and minimizing friction losses/ having a kink you cant see.

 

[monotrememan]

I was thinking a hard, flexible PVC tube (usually find them clear) would be a good compromise between needing flexibility and minimizing friction losses/ having a kink you cant see.

that's interesting. i assume you mean "PVC flex tubing". (is that right?) that seems a more robust pipe.