**** VERY LONG POST WARNING ****
Well, this week has brought some improvements finally. I have a few tweaks I've done this weekend that will hopefully finalize the setup this week, if I'm lucky, it'll be running Monday night.
First, I tested the system again, first for my 100% reset worry with the pump. I guess I built the sump right the first time at least because if I crank it up to 100% it will pull all the water out of the sump chamber faster then the overflow can keep up - BUT - the pump runs dry before the tank overflows, so even if it did come back on at 100% I'd be ok.
Second, I have the 6 setting controller but maybe a newer generation pump? Not sure, but in all the plugging and unplugging we have done this last month testing it, it has remembered its setting every time - hopefully that continues.
Third, I found the downflow issue and I think I got it fixed, although I did get a bit complicated doing it. I'm going to try to explain it below, but I'll post photos later on if it's too hard to follow, even I admit, this sounds complicated - but it works (finally).
I'm running the Eshopps PF-1800 overflow box, but now it's more modified - almost embarrassingly so - then I planned. I started wanting to run a Herbie type setup, but, I also wanted it to run one line as a dry emergency, instead of the trickle most Herbie setups run. I also needed to make this work with the overflow box, because the flow depends on the amount coming over into the box from the tank and my flow was high with just one line, I was running dry all the time - even with one bulkhead dedicated to the emergency drain. (This is where I was getting so mad about the low flow rate and noise).
So I built a stockman standpipe to control the noise (actually I built two as the first got scrapped after I realized a few things). So, now I have one bulkhead set up as a dry emergency drain, and the other with a Stockman standpipe. At this point I'm realizing a lot of issues are occurring because most directions, writeups, and ideas are using 1" pipe - and once again, I am going against the grain a bit by buying something in an odd size (1.5" bulkheads came with the Eshopps). Take note, if you don't want the hassle stick to 1", even my LFS hates me because they don't stock anything for me to buy right now. As I'm building the Stockman standpipe, I'm using directions and writeups I'm finding and recalculating things - not correctly mind you.
So here's the quick breakdown. The pipes that came with the Eshopps are an odd size so the best option I could think of would be to build this on top of those pipes (if this works for a few months I will probably replace the bulkheads completely so I can use threaded ones). The emergency drain has 1.5" spa hose siliconed into it, and I siliconed the pipe into the overflow box to prevent water creep under the edge (very important in how I'm running this system now). This hose sits up over the normal water level of the overflow box when running and does take the full water load when I block the other pipe, so it's tested, and it works.
The other pipe is siliconed to my pvc built Stockman standpipe. Since the bulkhead is 1.5" and there was limited room in the overflow box, I first built a standpipe using 2" pvc couplers for the sleeve over the main pipe. This doesn't work. There is simply not enough room to get the water to flow up under the sleeve at a high enough rate and remain quiet. You either get quiet and slow flow, or sucking noises and high flow. Now most would say (and have said) that I just need to live with the lower flow rate. No. This is where I was getting really frustrated late last week and started experimenting with odd stuff. I could fit 3" pvc (sch 40) into the overflow box, with a few milimeters to spare, but I could not fit the 1.5" to 3" pvc coupler, it was too wide. I started looking around the house for some ideas, preferably free stuff I could try out to see if I was on the right track. I grabbed the plastic ice cream container out of the recycle bin and decided to give it a shot. The lid fit snug in the box and the container was clear, thin walled, and free to use. (for reference, I used the pint sized one, chocolate mint, lol -
https://www.talentigelato.com/our-products/) The bottoms are really hard plastic, all I could do was cut it off in the end and cut a hole in the top to slide it onto the standpipe. After a bit of adjusting it on the standpipe, I got the perfect flow finally. I'm so happy at this point I don' think I will even change it out. It also has one other benefit, you can see the inside pipe and see your flow - this made it really easy to tune the air rate on the standpipe. It may be a bit ghetto looking, but it's working. I'll also note this here, I used a cap on the standpipe with a 1/2 threaded hole on top, and then I threaded a 1/2" boiler valve into that, so adjusting the air flow is more precise now too.
When I designed my standpipe, I cut two large flow holes into the pipe quite high as well. This now means the overflow box fills up higher than the middle section and it pulls the water flow across the whole box. When the flow it cut, it drains down to the hole on the standpipe, not the middle compartment like it would as a stock setup.
To solve the issue with the flow completely, I had to go buy a 1" u-tube and add it to the setup. This was ultimately the key in getting my flow rate where I needed it and to quiet the pipe with enough water going down it. I had read about how quite often two pipes will have issues, where one flows faster then the other, or one loses siphon from the other's position. To solve this, I have the 1" u-tube positioned in the box section with the emergency drain. This is why making sure that drain pipe is sealed to the bulkhead was so important, you don't want to have the compartment draining out and breaking the siphon for that u-tube. The 1.5" u-tube that came with the overflow box is positioned in the middle compartment like normal.
Now comes the next issue - or does it... Still thinking about the siphon issue above, we realized that we solved half of the issue. The u-tubes were now pulling enough water into the outside overflow box, but the box in the tank was not getting the flow it needed to keep up. We lowered the box, so water was skimming over the top completely, but it only took a few minutes and one u-tube was one the verge of breaking the others siphon again (they are the same length, but they don't sit tight so they can both move at an angle where the one sits higher than the other).
We thought about taping them in place, but I had another idea to test. When I was looking at flow rates and solutions to the overflow, I found a lot on the DIY overflow and description of vertical flow and horizontal flow rates. I can't find the post or I would link it (search in't working still). So I looked at my Herbie setup again and calculated some gallon loss, and here's what happened - I took the inside skimmer box off the system and ran the u-tubes directly into the tank. Two reasons it works - first, the u-tubes hang lower on both sides, no matter what angle they are sitting, then the hole cut into the Stockman standpipe that flows to the sump. Second, it does drain the tank down to the level of the hole in the Stockman standpipe - but the way my sump is designed, I still have an additional 1.5" inches to the top of the sump where it would overflow. Note - I had to then find some strainers that fit these tubes and make then fit (the pond supply store had two used ones that worked).
There's no way the system will flood now except for if the downflows would both block, then I have about a 1/2 gallon that would go over the rim before the pump runs dry, still not that bad, and I could keep a little less in the system and it would be fine too and never flood.
The give and take of the setup is that if the power goes out, the water levels out about 2 inches below the trim on the tank, it's not pretty but it works. I broke the system down one more time Sunday to change how the pipe flows out into the sump (glued it at the wrong angle and although it worked, my OCD kicked in again). Monday it will be getting reassembled again and hopefully, nothing got tweaked out of place bad enough I need to spend a lot of time on it.
Once I get this finalized I'll get some photos posted. I hope I wrote enough details in this post for it to make sense though.
Quick note - I have no valve on the downflow at all, it's full flow.
