16” Shadow Overflow - Noise when pushing Flow

[rushbattle]

My Modular Marine overflow just showed up, and it’s really nice. I didn’t have room for a EMS overflow, otherwise I would have really had to think about them as well. Either way, they are going to be a better fit for your specific needs because they make more than one size therefore design for a more specific flow range for each unit. You won’t be upset you went with either of the above, unless you need 0.5” thinner rear box and are flowing tons of water, but don’t care if it sounds like a large waterfall.

 

[behold81]

Be it noisy, how well does it work vs others ?
What other types/brands work better ?

My aquarium will be in the wall and all equipment will be in the reef room, so noise is not such a big deal, but.....?

It works. Can’t deny that. It moves water and looks good. Just sounds bad! But the issue is the overflow noise can be heard from the top of the tank. So it might not muffle it.

 

[cracker]

is there any design difference between the older Synergy's & the newer Shadows ?

 

[behold81]

I believe it’s the one piece moulded rear box mainly and the change to 1.5inch outlets.

 

[427HISS]

I must say, I'm staying with Vanessa and her hubby (can't think of his name right now) and if I have any noise issues, I'll read over their and fellow members that have solved the problems. Both of them have been wonderful to me, from ordering to answered my questions. I'm sure I'll bug them later as well. lol

I'm excited to get back to and finishing,.. the reef room build, drilling the tank and setting up our 125g in wall aquarium !

 

[don_chuwish]

My “V2” Synergy Reef Overflow, the version before the molded plastic one, has been great. Perfectly quiet except when the Tunze 6055s crash flow together - even then it’s just a slight trickle sound of water. I can see how a taller external box would be good though to submerge the inlets even more.

 

[TaylorPilot]

This is a diagram I did a few years ago for a scupper box I built for a friend of mine (out of 1/4" acrylic). I have always preferred to do these things myself, except where skills or patience are lacking (like the internal skim box). Worked like a charm. Adjust gate valve on the primary so secondary has just a trickle. If you want to raise the water level, raise the secondary don't close down the gate valve.

Interesting, and wouldn't be hard to implement. I am just wondering what the benefit is over just having an open system with a riser pipe in the emergency drain. If there is a benefit I am not seeing, I wouldn't mind adding that feature to our kits.

 

[Erica-Renee]

Interesting, and wouldn't be hard to implement. I am just wondering what the benefit is over just having an open system with a riser pipe in the emergency drain. If there is a benefit I am not seeing, I wouldn't mind adding that feature to our kits.

My Old external box has something similar. the water from the tank was dumped into a chamber like the one above with the emergency.then flowed over a baffle into the area where the Drains to sump are. the baffle was equal in height to the 3/4 the height of the holes bored in the tank. This keeps turbulence to a minimum and no air noise..

I am going to build a new box with this design inside a thin internal box. With scuppers around the bulkheads and NO External box.. I think To get more water movement, Better and Quieter designs with NO Turbulence the External box needs to ..

 

[don_chuwish]

Doesn't the U for the primary siphon make restarts quieter? Less slurping before full siphon?

 

[TaylorPilot]

So how is that any different then setting the water height with the open channel pipe? You can put the water level inside both chambers of the overflow by just cutting that pipe to different levels.

 

[TaylorPilot]

Doesn't the U for the primary siphon make restarts quieter? Less slurping before full siphon?

It does a few things. What you said is one. It does it by delaying the start of water flowing down the siphon, so that it can become fully submerged. The catch is that if your plumbing is too large, or your flow isn't enough, the water wont have enough speed to purge all the air out of the top of the siphon. If you have an issue, you can drill a little hole in the top of the siphon, but I recommend just setting it up with the proper sized plumbing for your flow levels. Even if your overflow comes with 1.5" drains, and you are flowing less that 1200 GPH, I would reduce your siphon down to 1" before and after the bulkhead. It makes it start quickly, purge all the air fast, and you don't have to put band-aids on the system like drilling holes in your siphon line. Just build the system so it is tuned properly and none of that is necessary. Your open channel and siphon can be over sized without any ill effect. But past a certain point, you are just adding more money, and taking up more valuable space below your tank. A 1" open channel will still flow allot of water, but it won't be quiet. But honestly you want it to be loud so it alerts you that there is an issue with the system. Remember, the emergency should only see water very briefly during start up or if something is clogged.

If you are flowing a decent amount of water, and just have an open bulkhead, it can create one of those little drain vortex like you get when draining your bath tub. It will suck in air and make allot of noise. By turning the drain down like that, it pretty much cuts out the chances of that happening.

 

[ca1ore]

I am just wondering what the benefit is over just having an open system with a riser pipe in the emergency drain. If there is a benefit I am not seeing, I wouldn't mind adding that feature to our kits.

So this is just me thinking out loud ….

A standard riser pipe works fine at lower flow levels, but not so much at higher flow levels, particularly if one has to raise up the water level in the external box to reduce splashing sounds. There may not be enough space to build head pressure over the emergency to handle all the flow without overflowing the external box. I 'proved' this to myself by experimenting a few years ago. So, it struck me that if there was a way to expand the linear overflow capacity of the emergency (think of 'unfolding' a 1" pipe.; it's only about 2 1/2 inches of linear overflow) by either putting in a baffle or by significantly upsizing the size of the overflow pipe. In my current overflow, I glued a piece of 3" pipe to the 1 1/2" bulkhead, thus increasing the linear overflow capacity to about 9" (durso pipes on RR tanks do this to a degree by upsizing the pipes to 11/4 or even 1 1/2' above the 1" bulkhead). Probably unnecessary for most implementations, but maybe critical as one approaches the max of the overflow unit.

 

[TaylorPilot]

So this is just me thinking out loud ….

A standard riser pipe works fine at lower flow levels, but not so much at higher flow levels, particularly if one has to raise up the water level in the external box to reduce splashing sounds. There may not be enough space to build head pressure over the emergency to handle all the flow without overflowing the external box. I 'proved' this to myself by experimenting a few years ago. So, it struck me that if there was a way to expand the linear overflow capacity of the emergency (think of 'unfolding' a 1" pipe.; it's only about 2 1/2 inches of linear overflow) by either putting in a baffle or by significantly upsizing the size of the overflow pipe. In my current overflow, I glued a piece of 3" pipe to the 1 1/2" bulkhead, thus increasing the linear overflow capacity (durso pipes on RR tanks do this to a degree by upsizing the pipes to 11/4 or even 1 1/2' above the 1" bulkhead). Probably unnecessary for most implementations, but maybe critical as one approaches the max of the overflow unit.

Now this makes sense. I could put the baffle .5" from the top of the box and even with the other two completely clogged, I bet I would have less than .25" rise at their maximum rated flow.

 

[TaylorPilot]

My primary concern when recommending flow numbers on the 1" drain systems has been the rise for the emergency drains. I would imagine that with this setup, you could flow almost 2k GPH with 1" plumbing, and do it safely.

 

[Dubs83]

My primary concern when recommending flow numbers on the 1" drain systems has been the rise for the emergency drains. I would imagine that with this setup, you could flow almost 2k GPH with 1" plumbing, and do it safely.

Too late to add that to mine?! [emoji3]

 

[TaylorPilot]

LOL, yours has 1.5" drains. It'll flow 3 times the flow you are going to put through it. And yes, it is too late...I hope to ship it out Monday.

 

[ca1ore]

Now this makes sense. I could put the baffle .5" from the top of the box and even with the other two completely clogged, I bet I would have less than .25" rise at their maximum rated flow.

BTW, I'm the one who just ordered those dual offset skim boxes from you - hairbrained ideas are my stock in trade LOL

 

[TaylorPilot]

Yea, I realized that once I re-read the entire message. Someone contacted me from Europe the other day and wanted to make sure it wasn't you. That is going to be an awesome, and it isn't too hair-brained. I had been planning on developing something similar, just hadn't had the time.

 

[Dubs83]

LOL, yours has 1.5" drains. It'll flow 3 times the flow you are going to put through it. And yes, it is too late...I hope to ship it out Monday.

Fair enough! [emoji869]

 

[justingraham]

The noise you hear is the money that was wasted on a crappy overflow box

Anyone who is seeing this please do not do what dubs me and so many other people did and get the (loudest ghost ever I might add) ghost overflow.

It’s sad the other day I saw someone post that they just got the ghost overflow they have been out of the hobby for years and they are so excited to have a quiet overflow box..... it’s a shame and I truly felt bad for them

Just get @TaylorPilot to do it right the first time and be happy like me

If you go with Taylor you don’t have to be told that you don’t know how to set up an overflow box and that apex flow monitors are wrong and that u must be dumb and stop bashing his small business and blah blah blah you just install the overflow and it works silently
I didn’t even have to change my plumbing crazy that the same plumbing (chamfered Plumbing at that) I had in the original overflow box that I didn’t know what I was doing with because everything was my fault worked silently in Taylor’s box.
One good thing came out of this tho I met Taylor and my tank is quiet

Do it right the first time so u don’t have to go thru what me and Dubbs did

PS
I know ur out there Mr Ghost Overflow I’m still waiting for that video to show me how your overflow can handle 3000 gph Silently.
What’s the matter you Still can’t find a flow monitor that can prove you right?