[o2manyfish]

Hey All,

I recently upgraded to an outdoor 100g sump. I have a 2" return line from the tank in the house. I put a Tee in the middle of the return line with a 3/4" reducer, and it feeds the 20gal refugium with a nice flow of water. The idea of pumping water without pumps using gravity is great.

So, now I want to try to plumb my chiller inline on the tank drain line. My thought was to make the dump to the sump Tee Up above the 2" line. This way the line to the chiller will be filled with water before the exhaust goes to the sump.

My question is, using this design am I going to be suscepting (Is that a new word I just created for DIY'ers) myself to gurgling or flushing in the drain line ?

I tried to diagram what I am thinking to try to make a little more sense of this.

The return from the chiller will be above the water line in the sump,

What I am worried about is that when the water starts running through the chiller loop it's going to start a syphon that's going to suck the water out of the 2" line and creating some air noise issues.

[o2manyfish]

I can't believe no one has tried this before....

Okay I guess I will build this sometime this week and let you know if it works and whether it works silently or not.

Dave

[kevinpo]

Here's my thoughts. In your lower picture you show the 2" T being higher than the outlet for the chiller. Water doesn't like to flow up hill. It will prefer to go straight in this case to the chiller. Chillers are rated for a certain flow usually in GPM. This must be met or you can either trip the freeze stat or not be too efficient. Very hard to control with gravity flow through a 2 outlet system. Lets say you have more flow than can go through the 1" chiller line 1500 gph + then it will develop some pressure and backup into the 2" line and overflow into the sump. If the overflow portion is constructed correctly it will be quiet. The ends need to be below the waterline or you will hear some splashing. A length of PVC with a bunch of holes drilled in the sides works well.

Regards,
Kevin

[o2manyfish]

In case anyone follows up on threads -- I went ahead and built this return line today.

It works awesome. Out of a 3/4" outlet to my refugium I have flow up to about 750 GPH. At the same time at the other end of the line through the chiller I get a flow of about 700gph through a 1" line.

There is some gurgling coming from the 3/4" Refuge line - I will work on it in the next couple of days.

The next thing I am going to try is to add a 3/8" line to try to power the water through my Calcium Reactor.

What I love about this is that I have removed numerous pumps, powerheads, electrical, cords from the system and am using the free power of gravity to make everything work.

Dave

[Reefland]

I am trying to vision what you have going on here. First of all in the illustration, the top picture is what you had and the bottom picture is what you have now?

If it is working it sure looks interesting and I'd like to know more about it.

[o2manyfish]

Reefland,

Yes the top picture is what I initially had, and it was flowing maybe 150gph into the refuge just by tapping off the 2" line.

The pump from the sump to the tank is a Dolphin 3000. But the tank, a 125H has only a single ooverflow box in the corner. So it can handle a maximum flow of about 2000gph.

The excess waterflow just cycles through the sump.

Using the 1500+GPH running through the main tank, I have a 2" return line - As pictured in the top photo.

The final outcome of plumbing is not quite as clean as the diagram. You would have to see a photo to understand, I can't explain it. But function wise it is the same as the diagram

The Chiller is about 4 feet away from the sump. The 2" line was reduced down to 1" Spa Flex. As of tonight the Spaflex from the chiller dumps into the top of the sump.

Tomorrow I will do a sump wate change and place a bulkhead in the sump below the water level. This should increase the flow even more because the chiller will step the water down about 10" so that is another 10" of gravity to pull more water (naturally).

I placed a 1" Sch 80 dual union ball valve on the outside of the chiller, so I can slow down flow if needed. The flow coming through the 1" line is pretty impressive.

So far other than some gurgling noise in the refugium line, which I think will dissipate once I reduce the flow through the refugium.

Reefland,

Does that answer the questions? What more would you like to know ?


Dave