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Re: Surface skimming, sumps, floods
On Mon, 12 Jul 1999, Joseph R. Sachleben wrote:
> I have found some information on the Krib site. Erik Olson
> has an entry in the Krib archives dated Oct 98. Most of
> what he says is clear, but he also wrote,
> To keep the water returns from back-siphoning
> everything out of the tank during a power outage,
> I have small holes drilled near the top that will
> break the siphon.
> I know you're out there Erik. How do you prevent water from
> squirting out these holes when the pumps are one?
I don't. The holes are right at the surface or just below, so there's not
really a lot of "squirting" per se. I do have problems with this, because
the holes eventually clog up with algae and crud... I've been playing with
a newer design that uses PVC and ping pong balls to break the backsiphon
when the power turns off... it's been marginally succesful.
> If you are
> using a siphon to take water out of the overflow, how do you
> get the siphon restarted after the power goes out? I seems that
> you would pump the sump dry and ruin your pump.
The basic idea is that you have the tank on one side, a small tank on the
other side with an overflow standpipe, and a siphon connecting them. When
power fails, water drains only down to the level of the standpipe, so the
siphon does not break.
I have a diagram of the overflow skimmer I built at
http://www.thekrib.com/Plants/People/Olson/prefilt.gif
Its main advantage is that it uses an aquaclear-300 sponge as its
prefilter. It has many disadvantages too, which I mentioned in the
article.
Many other people have created overflow skimmers utilizing the same basic
priciples (see http://www.thekrib.com/Filters/overflow-skimmer.html for
some examples).
- Erik
--
Erik Olson
erik at thekrib dot com