Plumbing gravity issue. Help needed.

[arking_mark]

My Octo KS-100 Kalk Stirrer uses gravity to dose.

It is remotely installed behind a wall (right behind the tank).

The tube goes through a hole in the wall that is slightly below where it enters the cabinet and gets to sump. This means there is a short uphill before the downhill to the tank.

I believe this causes an air lock and backs up the whole system.

my experiences with airlocks in my gravity fed system

how I learned to mitigate airlocks in my system,, tho some jiggling is always required when the lines have run empty

www.nutrac.info

Because the tank is already in place I'd prefer not to drill new holes that better align.

I already tried increasing the tube size from 1/4" to 3/8", but that was a fail.

I will try raising up the doser higher to increase gravity pressure.

Any other ideas on how to overcome this issue?

 

[Dkmoo]

Not sure of this will cause a dosing problem since I never used kalk, but from a physics perspective all you have to do sub merge the end of the dosing line, if air can't get into the tube, then yiu can't have an airlock

 

[arking_mark]

Not sure of this will cause a dosing problem since I never used kalk, but from a physics perspective all you have to do sub merge the end of the dosing line, if air can't get into the tube, then yiu can't have an airlock

The KS-100 has an elbow up drain inside the doser. Meaning, air will enter the tube from top when the dosing pump stops adding water to the doser (which happens at the bottom).

But I like the thought process...more ideas please.

 

[Dkmoo]

Sry don't quite follow without a diagram. But assuming I understand you right, you are saying that air will go into the tube when the dosing stops right? So as long as the air doesn't travel down the tube and get stuck in the section of the tube after the point that it will start going uphill, then it will ot be stuck in the top bendy peak. So if yiu can gauge how much air or how far the air will travel, you can play with the length of the tube before the point where it starts to go up vs after, so that yiu ensure either the air stops before going into the lock, or it'll slowly travel back up the top and out of the tube, or get pushed out the bottom of the tube on the other side during the dosing process

 

[Cory]

Probably the only fix is to use a paristaltic pump.

 

[ZoWhat]

This guy has the answer...

 

[Bruce60]

You didn't quantify how much lower the hole in the wall is from the one in the stand. However, if the line can get air into it then the air will get trapped in that area no matter how high you mount the reactor.

I know you said that don't want to drill again, but that may be the easiest way in the end. I have had similar situations and I have learned that sometimes there are no good alternatives. Having said that, could you extend one of the holes to enable you to slide the tubing into a better position? That's what I wondered how much distance you had to make up. If you have to re-drill, I have had great success using fish tape to pull something through like that without having to move heavy stuff.

Good luck!

 

[Chrysemys]

Hard to picture it, but could you put a tee at the high point to provide an air relief. The height of the air relief tubing would have to be high enough so the flow to the tank is the point of least resistance. Or it could be something you manually open just to get your flow started.

 

[arking_mark]

Testing out this solution...

 

[arking_mark]

...and I switched to an IceCap reactor. The potency of the kalk was 25% - 50% what saturated should be with the slow stirrer setup. I'll see what the magnetic one is able to produce.

 

[arking_mark]

Testing out this solution...

So this does seem to work. The only issue is dosing comes in spurts. Looks like I'm going to figure out how to drill a hole behind the fishtank. Grrr...

 

[Topekoms]

Not sure of this will cause a dosing problem since I never used kalk, but from a physics perspective all you have to do sub merge the end of the dosing line, if air can't get into the tube, then yiu can't have an airlock

Yeah but it will also probably clog if it's under water

 

[arking_mark]

Yeah but it will also probably clog if it's under water

Yeah. This was not an option to try for exactly that reason. It will definitely clog.

 

[Chrysemys]

A new hole might be your best bet, but I would try one more option if you want to try to avoid drilling. Switch your elbow coming out of your doser to a Tee. Put the air relief there instead of at the y.
I can imagine air does make it back out that y, but it has to “fight” with the water and air coming down the line. Builds up until it had enough air to push all the way out and that could be why you’re getting dosing in bursts. All just speculation, but it makes sense to me.

 

[arking_mark]

Unfortunately, the elbow seems to be glued in. That was actually my 1st thought.

 

[arking_mark]

So a new hole was made and the tubing goes down to the sump. Tubing is maybe 3 feet. I'm still getting some sort of blockage using a slow 2.5ml/min flow. It seems like it's still airlocking. I kinda feel like I'm missing something.

The reactor is basically directly behind the tank separated by a wall. The tubing now goes straight through the wall always downward. It plugs into my sumps tubing holder.

I'm running out of ideas. Any thoughts?

 

[Chuk]

try and cut in a tee right before the wall. Run the straight run to your reactor and the branch 90 connection straight up a foot higher than your pump can make it. The water will start to fill the tube but since its higher than the head of the pump it wont come out. Then the straight run is free to flow full where you want it. It may take some experimentation to get the right height.

 

[arking_mark]

try and cut in a tee right before the wall. Run the straight run to your reactor and the branch 90 connection straight up a foot higher than your pump can make it. The water will start to fill the tube but since its higher than the head of the pump it wont come out. Then the straight run is free to flow full where you want it. It may take some experimentation to get the right height.

Basically lowering the Y I have near the reactors output?

 

[Chuk]

As close as possible to where you think the air lock is occurring as that would be the part the needs to be vented.

 

[arking_mark]

As close as possible to where you think the air lock is occurring as that would be the part the needs to be vented.

I don't believe there should be any airlock anymore. There is no place the tubing makes an upturn. Can you have an airlock with tubing that has no upturn?