I really need help. (Hopefully with a Herbie style drain)

[Matt]

Originally Posted by rocketlily

I am not having any luck with trying to do plumbing. The tank is 90 gal and I have an over flow compartment in which I have built a durso. The noise of the water entering the sump is unbearable. Something like running a bathtub. Massive air bubbles and alot of noise. It has nothing to do with the holes in the cap, as it doesn't make any difference whether the cap is on the durso or not. I am also getting alot of fluctuating height in the water in the overflow, up and down. Not to the point where it sounds like a toilet flushing, but it rises and lowers.

The tank is in the living room and I really need to try to make it quiet. Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

I remember this battle. It took me some time to understand how my Durso thinks. It wanted many things before it would shut up. Now we have an understanding.

The trick with a durso is that there has to be enough air entering the standpipe to avoid a siphon. If a siphon forms, you'll get "flushing". Backpressure also can create flushing, as air will get trapped in the standpipe as Hairytank points out.

I don't know how loud is "too loud" for you. A durso will never be dead silent like a herbie, because there is air in the pipe and that creates turbulence both in the pipe and on entry to the sump. There's no way to make that go away completely, but it certainly can be tuned to be reasonably quiet. In my living room, the drain is just slightly louder than the return pump hum, and that's good (I like water noise more than pump noise).

A closeup photo or two of the durso and the sump entry would probably help.