First time Plumbing. Help dialing it in?

[Jarad]

All,
First time plumbing and trying to dial in a first return and pump flow. I’ve tried a lot of options. I can turn my pump down to like 15% and have no return flow through to keep it quiet and not get much of a siphon. Or Jack it up and close the air hole some, but then the return siphons is so fast it starts to slosh in the sump section it flows into. I’d rather have more flow but the bubbles and splash it creates is obnoxious. Thoughts?

 

[chaples55]

Shove a piece (maybe about 8") of RO tubing in the hole on top of that pipe. That should help quiet it down and moving the tube up or down will help tune how much air it pulls in. You can also add an air valve for more control.

In the sump area you could try adding a 90 that is mostly, but not completely, submerged.

 

[Jarad]

Thanks for this. I got it pretty dialed in for noise through the standpipe, but it's a waterfall of sloshing into the sump area. I wasn't sure how to quiet this down some, and reduce the splashing while still also actually reducing the return pump to like 10%. Was thinking maybe sealing the return area off some with plastic/styrofoam. I'll try the 90degree idea as well as that should slow it down some. Thanks for this!

 

[chaples55]

I had another wild idea...

The main reason for the noise and sloshing on single drain setups like this is that you can't run a full siphon, meaning you're always pulling a mix of air and water. A full siphon like in a Herbie or Bean Animal configuration runs nice and smooth. No air = no noise and no sloshing.

So what if you could make a Herbie overflow with a single pipe... Assuming your drain is a straight shot all the way down to the sump, you could remove the cap and put a smaller diameter pipe inside the drain to act as your emergency standpipe. You could then run the larger pipe at a full siphon.

So instead of this:


You would have something like this:


You wouldn't be able to use a valve to control the siphon, so you would have to tune it by adjusting the flow on the return pump or changing the size of the inner pipe.

 

[silentdeath5]

What I’ve always done with an overflow like yours is to turn the return pipe into another drain so it’s a herbie. I’ll then make a return out of pvc over the top of the tank. I paint the pvc black and it blends right in.

 

[Jarad]

I've thought about full siphon, but from a little reading there are some risks to this. I have a pump that can maintain it, but it's a LOT of water, and starts to butt up against having too much in the event of a failure.

As for @silentdeath5 ; I've also considered this, but am currently planning it as a bit of a peninsula type, so I wanted to try this as option 1. But something to consider if I need next ideas. Going to try the seal idea first and see if it's a disaster or not.

 

[silentdeath5]

Yeah, the risks of just having 1 return is way too much. I wouldn’t be able to sleep now with anything less than a herbie style.

 

[chaples55]

I just make sure the return pump chamber is small enough that it runs dry before it can make the tank overflow. Had a snail block a single pipe return once and flooded the floor. Ever since then I try to make failures impossible...

 

[enderg60]

You have it pretty good. Do add some 1/4" tube to quiet it down a bit.

You can do the drain as pictured above but you would need to run your pump return outside of the tank. If thats not a deal killer, that is the route I would go.