loud drain to sump (air bubbles), how to quiet?

[Armando]

from what i understand the tee is placed on the bottom of the sump.

 

[JohnK]

the t should be at or just above the water line. see attachment

 

[Armando]

that wouldn't be an upside down durso.

 

[ScottM]

like this

upside down durso

 

[dedfish]

nunofs...so where are the pictures?

 

[Daragon]

Thanks Scott, I'm going to try this for the third time. Third times a charm...

 

[JohnK]

Armando,

I was thinking the same thing (that looks like an upsidown durso).

It works to break the siphon in the drain pipe and allow the trapped air to escape before becoming bubbles and gurgling. This works like having the overflow dump out just above the waterline, but the splashing and noise is contained in the PVC. It doesn't make much sense looking at the picture, but one way or another it works great.

j

 

[JohnK]

Oh yea, I haven't tried it the way it's set up in the pic scott posted but it looks to me like that would work about the same. Either way your creating a way for the air in the overflow to escape before becoming bubbles in the sump.

 

[nunofs]

nunofs...so where are the pictures?

Ooops, someone's paying attention
I haven't forgotten about the pics, but just got back from a camping weekend and haven't had a chance to post them yet... will probably post them later this week. I haven't had the time either to apply any of the suggestions in the thread yet, but am following this with interest (lots of great suggestions, I'll probably use a combination of a few of them).

Nuno

 

[nunofs]

Update: I just built two "upside-down dursos" (one for the sump, one for the refugium; my overflow drain is split between the two) like Scott suggested... the bubbles are gone, and it's pretty much silent even without filling the riser with polyfill. Thanks!

Nuno

 

[jAKE]

I use a durso standpipe to feed water to my sump. The opening of the drain has a T fitting on it and a plastic fish bag over it. The fish bag has a bunch of holes in the bottom and is tied well above the water line with a zip tie. This eliminates salt spray and excess humidity in the stand, lowers the noise oand it seems the amount of bubbles, and makes the waterin the sump much more still causing more detritus to settle out of the water column and less wear and tear on the water auto top-off system.

-Jake

 

[dedfish]

I just filled my tank up to test it and I used the upside down durso setup for the drain. I have a dual 1 inch drain to sump and the upside down durso seems to be burping. Anyone know how to resolve this or what the cause is?

 

[nunofs]

Talk about coincidence... I was just talking to Scott and Ray today about the same problem in my sump... although I mentioned a while ago that the upside-down durso solved the bubble problem, it really only worked in fresh water, or with the pump dialed back a lot, or... I didn't really keep track of all the variables... it was fine when the tank was leak-testing in the garage, but the bubbles came back as soon as I started up the tank for real... I ended up putting a filter sock around the output of the pipe in the sump, but it gets clogged up really quickly so I removed it... now, even with the return pump dialed back a lot (if I open it up it only becomes worse), I have lots of bubbles, which seem to go past the upside-down durso directly to the horizontal pipe opening...

I also tried the airline-down-the-durso-pipe trick but couldn't get the bubbles to stop or even to reduce the number of bubbles... fwiw, the overflow itself is pretty quiet, the noise is coming from the air bubbles in the sump (along with a terrible salt spray).

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Nuno

 

[NateHanson]

I also did the upside down durso, and about half the bubbles are going past the vertical vent, and out the water exit in the sump, so I'm going to add a 4-way fitting at the top of my sump with another vent. My return comes in horizontally and I have a T at the top of the sump which has a reducer and valve going out the opposite side to the refugium, and the straight down direction is for the main part of the return. So I'm going to replace that T with a 4-way, and put a vent pipe on the top. This will also hopefully reduce the bubbles in my refug line.

 

[NateHanson]

I think another solution would be to increase the pipe diameter to 2 inch right before your upside down durso in the bottom of the sump if you have the space. That would slow the water down, and I think more bubbles would have the chance to exit the vent, before getting swept out the end of the pipe. Unfortunately I don't have space in my sump for that simpler solution (yeah, it's pretty tight).

Nate

 

[dedfish]

What I mean by burping is that water comes up the air vent portion of the upside down durso and overflows the top. It happens like every 10-15 secs.

 

[NateHanson]

That was happening to me too. I think it's because the diameter of the pipe is too narrow to allow the bubbles to disipate without pushing some water up out of the pipe. I solved the problem (partially) by lengthening the vent pipe to about 12" above the sump waterline. But I think a more complete solution would be to increase the diameter of all the drain piping from just before the vent to the end of the drain so the water slows down and has a chance to separate. Just theory though. I don't have room to try it!

 

[dedfish]

I wonder if either of these would work....

 

[Daragon]

I have tried figure A, with no luck...

 

[NateHanson]

Fig B might work if the lower piping was all big enough to allow lots of space for the air to escape, and room for the water to slow down.