Re: check valves

[Neal De Pape <neal_depape at yahoo_com>]

Tomoko wrote:
> Thank you for the good information!

> I wanted to turn my reactor to an in-line type so 
> that I caneliminate the view of a powerhead hanging 
> in the tank.  My powerhead is a bit noisy, too.  
> Now I should be able to kill two birds with one 
> stone.

And after such nice praise, I now have to add a
caveat...  Charles Kuehnl and I have been having a
discussion offline about his Tom Barr designed and
created reactor and it turns out there was something
about Mr Barr's reactor I wasn't aware of.  My reactor
uses 3/4" fittings for the water inlet and outlet,
which is actually just a touch bigger than the Eheim
16mm tubing, its a stretch fit.  Mr. Barr's reactor
uses a 1/2" fitting for the inlet and outlet.  Charles
has been using his Barr reactor connected to his Eheim
and has been having some issues with the flow being
restricted too heavily.

So I guess I have to add that if the reactor you got
from Mr. Barr has 1/2" fittings like Charles' and you
are going to use it in a way Mr. Barr didn't envision
when he designed it, you might have issues with flow
restriction.  This is not because of a flaw in the
design of the reactor, having seen pictures of
Charles' I can tell its a very well designed and
constructed reactor and Charles is very happy with his
reactor, but simply because the 1/2" fittings offer
too much restriction as opposed to the Eheim 16mm
tubing.

Neal D.


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com