To trickle or not to trickle?

[BeaverLakeAndy]

If you use a Herbie drain system in your overflow do trickle into the emergency standpipe or keep it dry? Why?

I've read a lot of stuff that says to keep a slight trickle going down the emergency standpipe, but don't let it create a siphon. I'm trying to understand why we would even bother to let it trickle into the emergency standpipe if there's a full siphon on the shorter standpipe.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I've never read that suggestion, and I'm 100% with you. Why would you want a trickle in the emergency drain?

 

[Fish man]

I just changed my system to a herbie. The reason for the trickle is that you can never get a perfect balance in your overflow. You adjust your gate valve on the drain line to get the siphon and it looks like its stable, with no trickle, and the water level is not going up or down. But no mater how close you get it it's never going to be perfect. It may take several minutes or even hours but the level in your overflow is going to rise or fall. Obviously if it falls your overflow will eventually drain down and lose siphon. So you adjust the valve so the water level in the overflow is rising ever so slightly until it trickles into the emergency overflow. That's the only way you are assured it's its not lowering ever so slightly.

There is another thread here where it shows the drain stand pipe tee'd inside the overflow and the secondary pipe used as the emergency.
This won't work because eventually the secondary pipe will fill up defeating the purpose of the emergency overflow.

 

[BeaverLakeAndy]

I just changed my system to a herbie. The reason for the trickle is that you can never get a perfect balance in your overflow. You adjust your gate valve on the drain line to get the siphon and it looks like its stable, with no trickle, and the water level is not going up or down. But no mater how close you get it it's never going to be perfect. It may take several minutes or even hours but the level in your overflow is going to rise or fall. Obviously if it falls your overflow will eventually drain down and lose siphon. So you adjust the valve so the water level in the overflow is rising ever so slightly until it trickles into the emergency overflow. That's the only way you are assured it's its not lowering ever so slightly.

There is another thread here where it shows the drain stand pipe tee'd inside the overflow and the secondary pipe used as the emergency.
This won't work because eventually the secondary pipe will fill up defeating the purpose of the emergency overflow.

I adjust my gate valves probably 2-3 times a week trying to maintain the water level a half inch below the emergency standpipe. So you're right, it definitely doesn't stay level in the overflow. My problem is I can't get it to just trickle in the emergency standpipe either. It ends up creative a second siphon in the overflow. I think I've just realized that I'll be adjusting to gate valves regularly for the rest of my tanks life...

 

[dadnjesse]

Mine runs without adjustment with no flow through my emergency drain.

 

[BeaverLakeAndy]

Mine runs without adjustment with no flow through my emergency drain.

How?

 

[dadnjesse]

How?

Not sure how it just does.

 

[S.Pepper]

I'm coming from using a ball valve in my first system to a gate valve with an external overflow in my new system. I rarely had any issues with the ball valve in my Waterbox 60.2--it kept the level in my overflow pretty consistent. With the new system I have been fighting this issue of maintaining a consistent level in my overflow. The biggest issue is if the water in my overflow raises, my ATO comes on.

It makes sense to have the water level right at the top my emergency drain or maybe "trickling" into it; this would solve the problem of lowering my water level in my return pump section with the fluctuating level in my overflow and therefore activating my ATO. I hope that made sense.

p.s. I am using the herbie system.

 

[dadnjesse]

Tanks has been running 8 months without me having to adjust it other that the first day setting up.

 

[dadnjesse]

Actually mine is the bean animal sorry haven't had coffee yet.

 

[ca1ore]

Very old debate. The original herbie was with a dry secondary/emergency, but in a dynamic system even tiny changes will mess with the siphon/emergency balance. Thus, some of us began running it with a small amount of water through the secondary/emergency to set a constant overflow level. It's simply a maintenance tradeoff. The argument AGAINST the trickle is that it compromises the emergency. I never found this particularly compelling, so the maintenance advantage won the day for me.

The bean design then separated the secondary and emergency so you could still run the trickle to set overflow level but not compromise the emergency in any way.

 

[BeaverLakeAndy]

Very old debate. The original herbie was with a dry secondary/emergency, but in a dynamic system even tiny changes will mess with the siphon/emergency balance. Thus, some of us began running it with a small amount of water through the secondary/emergency to set a constant overflow level. It's simply a maintenance tradeoff. The argument AGAINST the trickle is that it compromises the emergency. I never found this particularly compelling, so the maintenance advantage won the day for me.

The bean design then separated the secondary and emergency so you could still run the trickle to set overflow level but not compromise the emergency in any way.

I've figured with all the water level fluctuations in my overflows I'll either continue to make adjustments to the gate valves or live with a second siphon in the emergency standpipes. I've never been able to get it to even trickle a little bit, it's either well below or well over the emergency standpipes. Not ever sure I should worry about it at this point.

 

[Vette67]

I adjust my gate valves probably 2-3 times a week trying to maintain the water level a half inch below the emergency standpipe. So you're right, it definitely doesn't stay level in the overflow. My problem is I can't get it to just trickle in the emergency standpipe either. It ends up creative a second siphon in the overflow. I think I've just realized that I'll be adjusting to gate valves regularly for the rest of my tanks life...

Why would you ever use an overflow system that you had to constantly tinker with? What happens if you go on vacation for a week? I would hate my tank if I had to do that constantly. I just use noisy gravity overflows and don't mind the slight background gurgling in my living room. It's almost soothing sounding, like a flowing river. And in almost 20 years, I have never once messed with it. Is attempting to get rid of a little noise worth that much trouble to you?

 

[ca1ore]

The problem with more than just a trickle is that you lose emergency 'headroom'.

 

[BeaverLakeAndy]

Why would you ever use an overflow system that you had to constantly tinker with? What happens if you go on vacation for a week? I would hate my tank if I had to do that constantly. I just use noisy gravity overflows and don't mind the slight background gurgling in my living room. It's almost soothing sounding, like a flowing river. And in almost 20 years, I have never once messed with it. Is attempting to get rid of a little noise worth that much trouble to you?

Well, to be perfectly honest, I did not know or think this would be an issue with the Herbie Overflow system when I built this setup. I did quite a bit of research on drain systems and actually never read anything about having to constantly adjust the gate valves.

 

[92Miata]

Why would you ever use an overflow system that you had to constantly tinker with? What happens if you go on vacation for a week? I would hate my tank if I had to do that constantly. I just use noisy gravity overflows and don't mind the slight background gurgling in my living room. It's almost soothing sounding, like a flowing river. And in almost 20 years, I have never once messed with it. Is attempting to get rid of a little noise worth that much trouble to you?

There's something wrong with his setup if its constantly needing to be tweaked. The siphon based overflows will have their level change somewhat (because barometric pressure affects them) - but not enough that they should need to be tweaked all the time. I'd guess he's got very little vertical space between the siphon and the overflow pipe.

They should be mostly self adjusting - because as the level in the overflow increases, you get more pressure - which increases flow/volume.

 

[BeaverLakeAndy]

There's something wrong with his setup if its constantly needing to be tweaked. The siphon based overflows will have their level change somewhat (because barometric pressure affects them) - but not enough that they should need to be tweaked all the time. I'd guess he's got very little vertical space between the siphon and the overflow pipe.

They should be mostly self adjusting - because as the level in the overflow increases, you get more pressure - which increases flow/volume.

There's a full 6 inches of space between the main siphon standpipe and the emergency standpipe. Same setup in both corners. My the water level never drops far enough to catch air and break the siphon on the main standpipe, but it does fluctuate anywhere between 1 and 3 inches over the course of a couple days.

 

[92Miata]

How much water are you moving and how big is that pipe? I'd guess you're too restricted with that strainer - mine never fluctuated more than about an inch - but the smaller the actual orifice/more flow you're moving, the more its going to vary

 

[Vette67]

There's a full 6 inches of space between the main siphon standpipe and the emergency standpipe. Same setup in both corners. My the water level never drops far enough to catch air and break the siphon on the main standpipe, but it does fluctuate anywhere between 1 and 3 inches over the course of a couple days.

My return line is that line in your tank with the strainer on it and your emergency overflow is my only overflow. The level never fluctuates, because it has to overflow into that drain. And in 20 years, I've never had a snail crawl onto that side of my weir. But with a 180, I have an overflow in each back corner of my tank, so there's some redundancy. Yes there's a little water flow sound, but I kind of like it. Puts me to sleep if I ever have to sleep on the couch in the living room. I've had the tank longer than my 17 year old son has been alive, so he doesn't know any different. The tank has always made that sound to him. I don't know. I just like simple things that work. Even if I get a bigger tank, I don't know that I would ever overcomplicate something like an overflow. Let gravity do it's thing. I might consider a durso, but that's as sophisticated as I would get. It's not worth all that engineering to try to get rid of a little water noise.

 

[dbowman5]

The advantage of having a level that stays up is that the cascade from the skimmer of the overflow is minimized. The herbie trickle has the advantage of allowing the skim to go down the drain instead of accumulating on the surface above the siphon