Surge - Take 2 :)

[AndyL]

Get a minor sucking sound from the stockman as it knocks off the syphon; the big one's still from the CSD - might just have to add some insulation into the stand to see if I can't eliminate that one...

[StirCrazy]

pretty neet, how does it work, although I think the sound of the toilet flushing ever 30 to 40 seconds would drive me nuts haha

Steve

[AndyL]

Physics

Basically just a U tube; surge bucket fills until the U tube is covered, once water pressure is high enough - air's forced out of the u-tube - syphon starts... Syphon drains until sucks enough air to stop it - and process begins again...

Not quite toilet flushing, but yeah, there's a syphon break that's either rather annoying or rather soothing depending on how you feel about surges

[AndyL]

Current FTS - 06/23:


Ok, Think I've got things mostly sorted out... Truck was broken into last night - and the good camera walked away - so appologies for the crummy P&S pictures...

For the record - hardware I'm using:

Custom built 5g tank (Colby @ Elite built) - 50$ (?ish? been a while)
Standard 5g Sump - 25$
Sterilite Brand plastic file cabinet (roughly 5g capacity) - 5$
Older than god mag2 pump w/ mag3 impeller - ???
Won Bro's 150w heater - bought in 2004 think it was 20$(Christian's big group order back from the days) <fingers crossed>
Old Odyssea 180 Skimmer body I had lying around - ???
Odyssea 250 needlewheel pump - 13.99 (thanks Red Coral)

Lighting - To be determined... Right now using some old flourescents I had kicking around - if I can scrape up some $ I'll be doing some LED lighting... Darn weddings - take all the spare $ away.

Current stock... Little bit of live rock from the main system; tossed in a hunk of digi & some colt (it'll look sweet in the surge)

If you are wondering - skimmers up in the surge tank as it displaced water - thus less time between surges (down to about 15 seconds now) also reduced surge down to ~ 1gallon.

Still need to do a final revision of the plumbing - thinking about doing a pair of locline nozzles for the surge outlet.

Overall system:

Yeah I really need to clean up don't I?

[Delphinus]

Nah, looks pretty tidy to me. I don't know what mess you're talking about. (I have kids. Shaddup.)

I don't mind the bubbles. It's just reminiscent of .. an actual wave crashing. If you wanted to reduce the bubbles, have you tried drilling a small hole in the pipe just above the water surface so any air trapped in the pipe can escape out there as the pressure increases? It won't eliminate them altogether but can work to reduce them. The only thing with so many bubbles, methinks, is the salt creep potential.

[BlueAbyss]

Hmm. If you put an open riser somewhere on the surge outlet of the CSD before the surge reaches the tank, would that give the bubbles a chance to break? It would probably work best if it were just before the tank (on a horizontal length of pipe)... but I have no way to verify this, I don't have a pump lying around to test my theory.

[AndyL]

There's actually a small hole just below the water level (if you look you can see some bubbles coming out of it) gets rid of the big "bloop" from the surge. Above the water line would act as a venturi (tried that) I'm good with the bubbles as is - i know many hate them, and yes salt creep is already a royal pain in the arse - but the surge motion is really neat in comparison to the more laminar flow patterns we're used to seeing in a tank...

Tony - you'll notice you never see shots of the rest of the basement the other 500 sq feet is the 6yr olds playroom... I'm contemplating buying a nice skidsteer so I can clear a path to the tanks

I could play - but I don't think a T'd riser would help out - in fact with the rush of the surge - I'd almost bet it would act as a venturi... If I really wanted - I could switch to the toilet bowl style surge system - eliminates the tail end bubbles of the syphon breaking; but I like the simple physics operation of this configuration.