Thinking of the future

[charlie]

OK, I have 3- 3/4" holes, and 1-1" hole, that as of right now make up one of my closed loops. If I used all 4 of these for intakes, do you think I could run them into an Ampmaster 3000, with a 1.5" intake.

[Steven Pro]

The cross sectional area of a 1.5" pipe is 1.76715 square inches.

The cross sectional area of a 1" bulkhead is 0.7854 square inches.

The cross sectional area of a 3/4" bulkhead is 0.4417875 square inches.

So, all four of those holes is 2.1107625 square inches.

[charlie]

I guess that is a yes??????

[Steven Pro]

Yes, the amount of water a pump can draw should be a function of the cross sectional area of the intake.

[Poseidon]

Uh.....

You lost me. Could you please break it down with GPH? Not to hijack your thread Charlie, but I am really confused as to what those numbers mean.

[charlie]

I agree with Mike

[Reefland]

In a nutshell, I beleive, that is the amount of room that the water actually has to flow through the pipes. It is for this reason that a 1.5" pipe is not the same as a 1" + a 0.5" pipe. In fact, based on these numbers the 1.5" pipe can handle more than 2-1" pipes. I am not sure how the measurements are taken nor how to convert it to GPH though.

[Poseidon]

SO if that is right, I should have no problem combining my 2 1" drains into a single 1.5?

[Reefland]

I think that is correct Mike. I'm no flow dynamics expert so I'll wait for Steven for back-up.

[Steven Pro]

Yes, it is how Scott explained it. The 'room' in the pipe is simply the cross sectional area. If you cut the pipe and measure the area of the hole inside, that is the cross sectional area, which is equal to pi (3.1416) times the radius squared.

[Steven Pro]

SO if that is right, I should have no problem combining my 2 1" drains into a single 1.5?

Yes, that should be ok.