Bean Animal drains not draining properly

[Daimyo68]

Originally Posted by Gripenfelter

All of my Bean Animal drains are 6" below the water line. They work fine right now but every time the power goes out the water level bounces around for a while before it re-adjusts. I should probably shorten the pipes.

I have a Hammerhead as well working at 80% wide open in the basement. My issue was with the main siphon. It wouldn't start up and my open channel would become my main siphon making loud gurgling noises. The problem was with air being trapped inside the elbow in the overflow box of the main siphon. Drilled a tiny hole at the highest point of the elbow. No more issues.

Once you shorten the depth of the pipe outlets, your going to be surprised at how fast it picks the siphon back up

The most likely reason that the air was staying trapped was because there wasn't enough velocity to pull the air pocket back into the pipe. When you shorten the outlets in the sump, that problem would go away. Try blocking off that little hole you drilled and see what happens after your fixes



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[braid11]

Originally Posted by Gripenfelter

All of my Bean Animal drains are 6" below the water line. They work fine right now but every time the power goes out the water level bounces around for a while before it re-adjusts. I should probably shorten the pipes.

I have a Hammerhead as well working at 80% wide open in the basement. My issue was with the main siphon. It wouldn't start up and my open channel would become my main siphon making loud gurgling noises. The problem was with air being trapped inside the elbow in the overflow box of the main siphon. Drilled a tiny hole at the highest point of the elbow. No more issues.

Before throttling down, my Hammerhead sees probably max 17' head. That would be 3600 GPH, and even at 20' of head that is 3000 GPH. No wonder it overflowed the first time I tried it. I am at about 900 GPH now, so throttled down to 25-30% of max.

I think I can't get past 900 GPH because the air will not purge fast enough. My drains are about 3-4" under.

I only have about 1.25 inches from the top of the overflow box (about normal water level when all is balanced), until it flows out of the tank onto the floor. So not much time to fill the box, and purge. Maybe that is part of the problem.

Also, I read that when the drains are too deep in the sump, it takes longer to purge.

You are 6" under, and at 80% of full throttle, you must be flowing way more than 1000GPH. I know the system is supposed to be good to 2000GPH, but i can't get close to that.

So you drilled a hole in the elbow inside overflow box. You mean in the 90 elbow? Is it submerged when it's running? Because otherwise would't it suck in air and break the siphon?

Tom

[braid11]

Originally Posted by Daimyo68

The drains in the sump should be in a chamber where the water level is normally stable. I know what your saying about the level going up and down on restart.

Do you have them in the skimmer section? Thats the best place for them. Even when restarting, the skimmer section should never drop below a given level. Mine is 10". This is due to the baffles being at 10", and even when the water level drops elsewhere in the sump, the minimum in the skimmer/drain section will always be the same.

Something else about the pipe being under the water is that you can have the siphon a little bit deeper than the other pipes. It helps promote the siphon on restart.

There was also something else in his thread that mentioned drilling a small hole in one of the ends of the pipes, but I don't remember for sure where that is.

It seem like your right about there though and your just minor adjustments away from being done

Well, after talking to Jeff at J&L, a knowledgeable guy I trust at a LFS here, I decided to go with one big sump, and some partitions they sell to divide the sump into sections for fuge etc. But water flows through them. Sump is 72*30*24, an old acrylic tank.

The tank bulges a lot, so it’s tough to cement in baffles to create a stable section where the water level stays the same. But I can see how useful that would be. I have all the materials, may have to try that.

Tom

[meander]

Originally Posted by braid11

All lines are 1.5 “ flex PVC. They run down 14 feet to the basement sump, and run horizontally about 8-10 ft across a bedroom dropping about 8”, then into the basement shop/sump room where they run about 16.5 horizontal feet dropping about 6-7”, then a horizontal run of about 8 ft dropping 6 feet into the sump.

Is it the horizontal runs? That would mean a whole redesign of the basement, moving the sump across the sump room 15 feet.

Tom

Bean has posted pretty specifically several times in his thread at RC that this system won't work with horizontal runs. He hasn't offered any thoughts on a solution for horizontal runs, he's just said if you've got horizontal runs, you're not using his system so he can't help.

Most of the problems people have written about are not with flooding, but with noise. The issue there is that the open channel stops being an open channel if it's not pretty much vertical. The theory of operation is that the water in the open channel clings to the sides of the pipe as it washes down to the sump, but sharp bends and/or horizontal runs wreck that effect.

I'm just about to test my own basement sump beananimal, and I've unavoidably got a couple of 22.5 degree bends in my open channel. I am hoping that it will work without issues...

[braid11]

So, I bought the big hammerhead in order to both feed the DT, and to tee off the return line to feed a fuge, and possibly a carbon Reactor, and a UV unit. I can see that would make dialing in the system very very tricky.

I have the tee in there, shut off for now with a TUBV.

May have to just feed the fuge off this, and nothing else.

molotov, those 1" gate valves aren't too pricey. I am finding it very usefull to mark the valve with a magic marker, and turn 1/8 or so at a time, on both the pump return and the drain. I had planned on using the TUBV only on the fuge, but another gate valve will definitely go in there.

Tom

[braid11]

Originally Posted by meander

Bean has posted pretty specifically several times in his thread at RC that this system won't work with horizontal runs. He hasn't offered any thoughts on a solution for horizontal runs, he's just said if you've got horizontal runs, you're not using his system so he can't help.

Most of the problems people have written about are not with flooding, but with noise. The issue there is that the open channel stops being an open channel if it's not pretty much vertical. The theory of operation is that the water in the open channel clings to the sides of the pipe as it washes down to the sump, but sharp bends and/or horizontal runs wreck that effect.

I'm just about to test my own basement sump beananimal, and I've unavoidably got a couple of 22.5 degree bends in my open channel. I am hoping that it will work without issues...

I had read that.

I have managed to make my system go dead silent at the DT end. Not sure what it's like 1/2 way along.

I just want to make it flow a bit more than 900 GPH, and be able to restart without my assistance. Also, I think those horizontal sections makes the system take a lot longer to purge air, and to find it's equilibrium.

I'm sure yours will be fine with a couple 22.5 bends.

Tom

[fishytime]

please forgive my ignorance but......whats the advantage of the Bean overflow over the Herbie?......Ive never used one, nor do I think Ive ever seen one being used on anybodies system that Ive seen.....seems like quite a lot of extra expense (two gate valves and three bulkheads versus one gate and two bulkheads) and fiddling around with the Bean......

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by fishytime

please forgive my ignorance but......whats the advantage of the Bean overflow over the Herbie?......Ive never used one, nor do I think Ive ever seen one being used on anybodies system that Ive seen.....seems like quite a lot of extra expense (two gate valves and three bulkheads versus one gate and two bulkheads) and fiddling around with the Bean......

Über quite. Absolutely no chance of flood tank. Lol well. Once it's running.

[gregzz4]

With the Bean Animal, the 2nd and 3rd valves are only there to completely isolate those lines during maintenance.
The advantage over a Herbie is thus;

The first line takes full flow as it's completely submerged.

The second, open channel line (with the air line) may take some overage from the first, but has air introduced into it, so it takes no time to handle the overage - there is no purging. When the overflow rises enough to block the end of the air line, the second now becomes full flow.

The third line is there as a last resort/backup.

[fishytime]

Originally Posted by Titus99

Über quite. Absolutely no chance of flood tank. Lol well. Once it's running.

Originally Posted by gregzz4

With the Bean Animal, the 2nd and 3rd valves are only there to completely isolate those lines during maintenance.
The advantage over a Herbie is thus;

The first line takes full flow as it's completely submerged.

The second, open channel line (with the air line) may take some overage from the first, but has air introduced into it, so it takes no time to handle the overage - there is no purging. When the overflow rises enough to block the end of the air line, the second now becomes full flow.

The third line is there as a last resort/backup.

ok.....but a Herbie does all that with two drains.....no siphon, no air line etc, etc.....