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Sump orientation question

Jeff Rehling

Jeff Rehling

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Thanks in great part to all of you who responded to my millions of questions, i'm about to get the last half of my equipment to cycle my tank.

Question 1: It seems with the MarineLand 75 with the overflow and return in the bottom, it would be more efficient to use 45 degree couplers to the overflow and have the return pump shoot directly up instead of making it work harder. Any thoughts on this? I don't have far to go with either line.

Question 2. What would be the best way to plump the bulkheads? Seems to me i want to glue PVC and then be sure to use unions. Correct?
 
1: Efficient sure, the less bends in a return pipe the less head pressure. Absolutely necessary? Not really, most people don't need to squeeze ever last GPH out of their return pump, and sometimes you'll have bends and 90s just because it's more effective to do that.

2: You'll get a few answers, but mine is simple, don't get cheap, don't think you can save every bulkhead sometime in the future because maybe perhaps you can use them on another project. Make sure you glue the pipes in well, and you won't have leaks, you want to be able to disconnect stuff, have unions near your pumps. The drain pipes it's not absolutely necessary unless you think you might need to remove your sump for whatever reason, but in that case you can always cut the pvc and use couplers to put it all back together, so again no big deal. The only exception is if you use filter socks with the pipes going into them, it might be a pain to remove the filter socks if you can't also remove the pvc. But any piece of pipe that's actually connected to something that might need to be removed for maintenance, absolutely use unions.
 
Yes, unions + glue.

Definitely avoid threaded PVC fittings as much as you can!
They can leak if you under tighten, and crack if you over tighten.

Consider flex PVC
http://www.marinedepot.com/1_Inch_E...ubing-Plumbing_Parts-FT13851-FIFTTUFP-vi.html
It glues like regular PVC, but is (somewhat) flexible. Makes tricky connections a WHOLE lot easier.
Just don't go larger than 1" or it tends to be pretty non-flexible.
Eliminates some elbows as well.
I use it for almost everything now except long straight runs.

+1 on not over-optimizing things.
Keep It Simple!!
 
my runs are very short...the return is less than 3 feet. i'm thinking of using the 3' flex tube that came with my sump for the return. not sure yet.
 
Just note that each 90deg bend adds 1' of head. Too many and it can drastically affect the overall flow rate.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I agree with the flexible tubing instead of hard PVC!! If you change anything, the PVC is much harder to deal with than a tube. And tubes are so much easier to move out of the way for maintenance.
 
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