Plumbing or pump causing water to drain from sump

[SeeFu]

I've got no clue why my tank seems to keep doing this every few days, but i'll come home from work or wake up in the middle of the night to sounds of water draining from the emergency drain. Basically what happens is either the water is draining slower or the return pumps have sped up on their own and a huge amount of water has been shifted from the sump and up into the DT. It's enough water shift where my tunze ato shuts down because its been on for over 10 minutes. Anyone have any idea what's causing this? I'm running the Cor 20 return pumps and i looked at the programming and they both have this

Fallback ON
tdata 00:00:00,0,0,58,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
If FeedA 000 Then 0
If FeedB 000 Then 0
If Leak_1 CLOSED Then OFF
If Leak_2 CLOSED Then OFF
If Leak_3 CLOSED Then OFF

Anyone have an idea's what's going on? My tank never had this problem for almost 8 months and then these past 2 weeks ive been having this problem. I'm running a herbie drain.

 

[John08007]

What type of an overflow do you have? I have a herbie design and I always have a little trickling down my emergency. Maybe a pic of the overflow chamber would help

 

[SeeFu]

herbie drain. oh i never had anything draining from the eneregency, is that how you're supposed to setup the herbie? I actually have a pretty large difference between the height of the primary and the emergency drain and you could always hear the water dropping down into he overflow.

 

[SeeFu]

i understand that the water lvl will slightly change within the overflow due to the gyre speeds, but this is a huge amount of water that's being trasnfered. something close to like 2-3 gallons.

 

[Albertan22]

I had the same problem, it’s the Fallback On line in your code. If your Apex loses wifi connectivity it forgets the smart calibration thing goes to a fallback of 100% power, not that calibration setting you set when you first setup the pump that became your new 100%. Your connection is likely being lost either because it’s losing wifi or Neptune is doing some middle of the night maintenance on their cloud services. You need to have Fallback ## where ## is the calibration setting. For me it is Fallback 48.

 

[CollectOyster04]

It could be that things are getting dirty as well. I use a strainer on my return pump and can tell when it starts getting dirty with how the overflows(have dual) react. Or the pump itself could use a cleaning. Even the overflow box(es) could be impeded by coralline or other algae that could affect the flow. Usually once I clean everything up, it all settles back in and keeps quiet. I try to stay ahead of the cleaning before any of that happens because nobody in the house appreciates the sound of the overflows acting up which always seems to happen about 3am, lol without fail !

 

[SeeFu]

I had the same problem, it’s the Fallback On line in your code. If your Apex loses wifi connectivity it forgets the smart calibration thing goes to a fallback of 100% power, not that calibration setting you set when you first setup the pump that became your new 100%. Your connection is likely being lost either because it’s losing wifi or Neptune is doing some middle of the night maintenance on their cloud services. You need to have Fallback ## where ## is the calibration setting. For me it is Fallback 48.

In your situation, when internet connection is lost, does the fallback of 48% goto 48% of max speed set or 48% of 100% max speed?

Wouldn't I also see a internet connection drop in apex heartbeat if this was happening?

 

[SeeFu]

It could be that things are getting dirty as well. I use a strainer on my return pump and can tell when it starts getting dirty with how the overflows(have dual) react. Or the pump itself could use a cleaning. Even the overflow box(es) could be impeded by coralline or other algae that could affect the flow. Usually once I clean everything up, it all settles back in and keeps quiet. I try to stay ahead of the cleaning before any of that happens because nobody in the house appreciates the sound of the overflows acting up which always seems to happen about 3am, lol without fail !

that's what i thought too, but i just cleaned the pump in citric acid so its like new. I'm really hoping that my plumbing isn't full of baby trochus snails. lol

 

[Albertan22]

In your situation, when internet connection is lost, does the fallback of 48% goto 48% of max speed set or 48% of 100% max speed?

Wouldn't I also see a internet connection drop in apex heartbeat if this was happening?

The Fallback 48 goes to what is my normal 100% since that is what my smart calibration is set at. You won’t get a heartbeat notification until it has been disconnected for quite some time in my experience. You can test this by just unplugging your home router or the head unit and seeing what happens with your pump. I guarantee it will ramp right up and drain your sump.

 

[Albertan22]

You also won’t get a heartbeat notification if the disconnect is on Neptune’s end.

 

[SeeFu]

perfect! thanks!

 

[John08007]

My herbie, the emergency drain is about 1" below the overflow, this keeps the sound down from water pouring over the weir. Then the valve on the suction is adjusted so that my overflow level is just slightly above the emergency height. This causes a little to go down the emergency drain, but not to the point that it makes noise from sucking air down. If you ever hear a toilet flushing sound from the tank then there is too much going down the emergency drain.

I doubt you could ever adjust the suction drsin to take the exact output of the pump without a little going in the emergency drain.

 

[SeeFu]

so i got home and sure as hell, the problem occured again. this time i even had the fallback command adjusted to 58. wonder if i just have the flow to high and its take 4-5 hrs for the problem to occur.

 

[laverda]

Check your drain for a restriction. Snails can cause havoc if they can get in there.

 

[SeeFu]

yea thats my next step. i just had a huge baby trochus snail explosion so i wonder if a bunch of them got into the plumbing.

 

[SeeFu]

well its definitely not the fallback line, it happened again overnight.

 

[John08007]

Have you disassembled the pump to check it for damage? Strange that it worked fine for 8 months, maybe post this in the apex forum

 

[Albertan22]

Well that’s a head scratcher, thought it was the fallback line for sure. Anything abnormal in the apex logs? Still draws the same power through the event? If so I’d say something is plugging up your plumbing maybe. The trochus theory was a good one, have you noticed any in your sump?

 

[SeeFu]

oh i've got several trochus snails in my sump now. but they're tiny. I was trying to see how much power the return pump was drawing, but for some reason I can't see it w/ the cor 20.

 

[SeeFu]

i've got 2 return pumps, so i'm going to remove one of them and run just 1. see if the problem is w/ a return pump.