I am looking at buying a 120 gallon tank (2x2x4) from our local LFS who is having a tank sale. I wish to use this type of overflow:
http://www.beananimal.com/projects/sile ... ystem.aspx
mainly for the silent and fail-safe features, but also because I hate overflow towers, I value square footage, and I do NOT trust overflow boxes. I also (evil laugh) plan to eventually tear a hole in the wall where the tank is going and make it viewable from both sides. Bwahaha! So I want to do a coast-to-coast overflow on the end (2' side) and make the 'stand' to enclose the sides to hide the plumbing.
But is it feasible to run this type of system with an ATS connected to the overflow?
The issue here is that in order for the system to run silent, the full siphon standpipe must terminate at least 1 inch below the surface of the water in the sump. Once all the air is purged, this creates a full siphon with a maximum flow of 2000 GPH (2500 GPH actually with my design) using a 1" pipe and 5' of drop. This of course can be throttled back with a gate valve to match the pump output, etc. But how would I divert enough water to an ATS box from this pipe without violating the principle of the design? The way I see it, if I tee off before the gate valve to an ATS, but below the gate valve a full siphon is still in effect, why would the water flow to the ATS at all? It would just get sucked out I would think.
I could run the ATS off the open channel standpipe, but that would defeat the purpose of the secondary line of defense, and in order to get enough flow, would end up filling up and probably gurgling, flushing, etc and would defeat the 'silent' purpose.
So the sure-fire solution would be to run the ATS on it's own dedicated pump in the sump. But I'm trying to avoid that if at all possible. I suppose I could tee off the return pump into the ATS...
Anyways, I'm looking for someone who currently runs an ATS and a 3-pipe system like BA/Calfo. If you respond to this thread, please state if you do this. If you do not, please feel free to throw in your opinions and thoughts, but please take a minute and read through BeanAnimal's design description on the link above. His design is tried and tested, and has not changed since he started his thread (which has been split due to length). I haven't had time to read through it all for obvious reasons (it's frickin' long) so maybe someone else has.
I posted on BA's RC thread asking if anyone had installed an ATS on such a system but didn't get much of a response. So I figure that someone on here might have thought about it, or even done it.