help to quiet my bean animal overflow

[Larry L]

I use a Maggie Muffler (www.maggiemuffler.com) on the top of my open channel drain, works great and very quiet. It works like a Durso but in a smaller form factor.

 

[minus9]

It may be too much flow for the 1" drains with two pumps, 1 1/2" drains would allow for more flow. Also, you may have to play with the height of your full siphon. When I set up my ghost overflow, I cut several sizes of pvc until I found the one that worked best. It's funny how half an inch would make all the difference.

 

[tworegtdi]

It may be too much flow for the 1" drains with two pumps, 1 1/2" drains would allow for more flow. Also, you may have to play with the height of your full siphon. When I set up my ghost overflow, I cut several sizes of pvc until I found the one that worked best. It's funny how half an inch would make all the difference.

thanks, does lower main siphon allow more flow or the opposite? or it depends? does the height difference between open channel and full siphon also matter?

 

[minus9]

thanks, does lower main siphon allow more flow or the opposite? or it depends? does the height difference between open channel and full siphon also matter?

I found that the height between the two siphons does matter and it's about an inch difference between the two. The key is finding the right height for the full siphon, then go from there (that's why you need a couple different height pieces). I would start at 2 1/2" or 2 3/4" for the full siphon, then cut another piece or two adding an inch along the way. I would think that two M1's at the lowest setting would be fine, which would equate to only a couple hundred gallons an hour, which the overflow should handle quite easily.

 

[92Miata]

The big issue here is you've got very little vertical drop and a ton of restrictive fittings on the drain - basically its got really low capacity. The amount of water a siphon will move is proportional to the difference in height in the two bodies of water, and pipe diameter squared - and it looks like you've got about 18 inches, if that. Most people's tanks are running about a 4 foot drop, so a 1" pipe moves a lot more water.


Try replacing the siphon line with a bigger pipe - go to 1.25, or 1.5 inch. Don't worry about gluing it, just use cheap white pvc and press fit - no unions or valves. Just remove the piece in the overflow for the moment. Don't worry about the fact that the bulkhead is smaller than the pipe - that doesn't matter much. You just want to quickly isolate that increasing pipe size will fix the problem.

 

[User1]

Not to nit pick but this isn't a bean animal - it is a similar design.

 

[Albertan22]

There is some dangerous advice early in this thread. You 100% do not want 2 or your 3 drains to be siphons, the valve also goes on the lowest pipe as you have done it. If 2 of your 3 drains are siphons, the emergency drain certainly won’t have enough capacity to take all that flow if there is a clog and your tank will overflow. The valve restricts the flow in the siphon line so that you can get enough water to backup in the overflow box to create enough hydraulic head to push the air out of the siphon line and initiate the siphon. If this is happening without any constriction from the ball valve you have too much flow coming from your pumps. A 1” pipe is a small drain to begin with, let alone taking flow from two return pumps. I’ve never run anything smaller than 1.25” drain lines, and my current setup uses 2” drain lines taking flow from a COR 20. You are getting a lot of noise from the open channel because it is running as a durso overflow with that much flow. You’ve basically got an operating siphon and a first next to it with an emergency drain that probably won’t handle the flow of something goes wrong.

 

[tworegtdi]

Thanks everyone for your input. So the issue was indeed because of too many elbows and not enough vertical drop for the main siphon line - the water does not flow "freely" because of that. I've tested by completely closing the siphon line and let open channel become a full siphon, the water flows much better in this case, due to less elbows and more vertical drop, so this got me thinking... is it possible to convert the current open channel to be the main siphon by adding a gate valve below? the current full siphon will be converted to an open channel. This can be easily achieved by swapping the pipes inside the overflow box. Do you guys see any merit to that? Again the reason for this conversion is because more vertical drop and less elbow in the current open channel drain. Thanks in advance!

 

[dadnjesse]

You can put two 45 degree elbow's together to make the 90, it be a little better if you have to have them.

 

[iprayforwaves]

@lite_rider is very good with plumbing, he might have some insight