Loud sump help

janda

Non-member
The drains into the sump are really loud. The tanks overflows are quiet and the AGA standpipes seem ok. The water noise when it reaches the sump is pretty loud. The tank is an AGA 125 with the two 1" overflows. Sump is in the stand. Pump is an Eheim 1260, 635 GPH but I'm guessing with head loss around 450? Also 1 drain feeds the fuge then the recirc skimmer then dumps into a bubble tower. This line is reduced already to 3/4" when it reaches the sump. The other feeds right down to the tower in 1". I've read either the reverse durso or the reduction from 1" to 3/4" just before I enter the sump would work. Any suggestions, thanks.
 
... and what's the noise? gurgling in the tubes? splashing (not submerged), bursts of bubbles (submerged)?
 
The pipes are just above the waterline, 1/4". They were under and lots of bubbling and seemed louder. Now I've got the splashing going on.
 
Submerge it about an inch or 2. If you want you can also add a filter sock.
 
Just make sure your filter socks get changed with some periodicity - otherwise you'll face a nitrate factory :)
 
Ok I'll try the reverse durso. The link describes it well. I'll post back with the results.
 
I'll start by saying that the reverse durso is probably the ideal solution, at least the most elegant. I like think about how and why these things happen.

Please someone correct me if I'm thinking about this the wrong way...

Air goes down the drain with the overflow water, and it has to come out somewhere. You probably have a nice straight shot and big bubbles are making it all the way down into the sump coming out in big noisy bursts of air.

I'm guessing that durso puts an impedance at the end with the T and slows the water down, backing it up a little. The air then looks for somewhere else to go, and it escapes up the stand pipe. I wonder if that T is critical to the design.

If your overflows already have standpipes (or even if they don't), there may already be somewhere for the air to quietly go out up top, in which case, you may be able to get away with something much simpler. Like just putting a speedbump in your driain on the way down. That'll cause a small backup in the flow, causing the air to stop and try to go back up the pipe instead of rushing down into the pump.

Here's what's happening in my overflow line. Pardon the bad pic, it was dark down there and the camera focused on the wrong thing. The flow is from right to left. You can see the flow coming to this point is at least half air. The water gets backed up just a little here, enough to send the air back up. Nothing but water (and some micro bubbles) makes it the rest of the way into the sump, and it's completely silent. I didn't put that there for this purpose, it's just a happy side effect of my plumbing.

This could be something as simple as an elbow, or the reducer like you mentioned. Or it could be something like the durso.

Sorry for turning this into a physics lesson, again I just like to think about how and why things work. :)
 

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Hi Bonz,
I can't see the picture at all, could you post it again? I am also trying to figure out a way to quiet down the noise in the sump.
thanks
 
I forgot to upload the picture, and I did it a few minutes after I posted. I can see it, can you still not?
 
Here's another way to set up the reverse duroso (or a few of them).

As I understand it, in the end it's a matter of allowing the air to escape up, and keeping the splashing contained. If the air can't get out and the drain is submerged it will gurgle and burp. If the drain isn't submerged you'll get splashing and extra micro bubbles.

You can restrict the outflow, but if you do you NEED a back up incase the restricted drain gets fouled. Cindy had a thread on this method somewhere, basically use one hole in the overflow to feed the drain, and the second hole is a back up drain and has a stand pipe just a bit higher so that if the first drain backs up the second will prevent a flood.

Anyway, here's how I do it. *note that the vent parts have Caps on them, each cap has a small hole in the top to allow the air to escape. The caps keep the noise and splash in the pipe contained. Lightly packing the caps with filter floss keeps the noise in all the better... The drain in the center is a gentle flow and space was tight so I left the cap off of that one.
 
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Good point about the backup drain, John. I guess you could say my drain is restricted in that it goes from a tube to pvc with an adapter that is a pinch point. So yeah, something that can fit into the 1" opening at the top might get hung up there. I have a piece of gutter guard over the overflow to prevent that.

Just the same, ANY overflow has at least a small reduction at the bulkhead.
 
that's for sure. The second hole in my overflow is used as the return. Is that not what it's for? I got my tank used, so it's just how it was set up.

I could convert it, and run the return over the top easily enough... now that I won't be sleeping at night. thanks! ;)
 
Hehe, didn't mean to make you worry...

Yea, the normal way to do it is to use the 1" hole as a drain and the 3/4" as a return. You can use both as drains and run the return over the top if your worried. If I were you, I'd just fiddle with your existing drain set up so that you don't see that back up. Maybe go up 1/4" on the tube and the PVC, or hard plumb it with PVC and add a reverse duroso.

OR... Just scoop up a big glass of saltwater and dump it into your drain quickly and see what happens. If it backs up for a short time, you might want to worry. If it handles the surge in flow easily, then you know you have a little room for error.

The biggest concerns I would have would be first and foremost
1- snail blockage (They are magic, A 1" turbo CAN shrink down to 1/4" to get past anything! OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but IME snails do have an unholy deal with Mr. Murphy's law)
2- Misc crud build up over time. Flow through pipes will slow due to slime, crud, Ca deposits, tube worms..........
3- Clear tubes will allow some algae to grow inside if any light hits them. Sometimes this algae will shed a good sized blob and send it down stream in hopes of creating a beaver dam or something. (Picture a blob of film algae half plugging a fitting)
 
They are magic, A 1" turbo CAN shrink down to 1/4" to get past anything! OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but IME snails do have an unholy deal with Mr. Murphy's law

They sold their souls. I knew they were evil.

:)

Thanks for the advice.
 
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