Inlet and Vortex, major alterations
Posted: Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:47 am
Hi all,
When I built my pond 11 years ago, it was built on a tight budget. For £4k I built an 11,000 gallon pond and filters, pretty good going I thought. I didnt know anyone else who kept Koi, there were no forums like this therefore everything was built using book or magazine references, plus experience with building my previous 4500 gallon pond at my last house. The pond and filters were all built of concrete and concrete blocks, very sturdy and meant to last and all were then fibreglassed.
Over the years though I've made various alterations, including proper benching in the filters which reduced the filter capacity by 1000 gallons from 2,500 to 1,500 gallons in total.
I still had a couple of niggling problems though, which had been there since the start.
- The Vortex never completly drained. Poor design with the Vortex depth being deeper than the waste drain point.
- The inlet chamber had a flat bottom and all the crap used to lie up in there. This chamber has 3 x 4" bottom drain pipework coming into it plus a 3" side wall drain and instead of fitting isolation valves, I fitted push-fit pipe upstands. These enabled each drain to be isolated, just like a valve. Unfortunatly the flat bottom was a poor design. 11-years ago 4" ball valves were a fortune to buy each and as I needed 3 of them I saved a fair bit here, but built in a problem!
- This filter copes with a 5000 gallons per hour throughput and some of the pipes between each filter section are restrictive. I used 4" pipes between the Inlet and Vortex, but then these were fibreglassed inside, which reduced the size to about 3.5 inch.
Picture of the Vortex which doesnt drain properly. 3 x 4" inlets can be seen at the top, these coming infrom the inlet chamber. There were only 2 originally, I added a third a few years back when doing the filter benching.
[img]http://www.koipix.com/gallery/albums/userpi ... CN1215.JPG[/img]
This is the Inlet chamber with the pushfit upstands fitted. The flat bottom can be seen here. The 3" side wall drain was converted to take an Aquamax 15000 and to pump to my Bakki Shower a couple of years ago.
[img]http://www.koipix.com/gallery/albums/userpi ... CN1212.JPG[/img]
This shows the depth of this inlet chamber, 45" for those who cant read the tape measure.
[img]http://www.koipix.com/gallery/albums/userpi ... CN1210.JPG[/img]
So what was to be done - see next post
When I built my pond 11 years ago, it was built on a tight budget. For £4k I built an 11,000 gallon pond and filters, pretty good going I thought. I didnt know anyone else who kept Koi, there were no forums like this therefore everything was built using book or magazine references, plus experience with building my previous 4500 gallon pond at my last house. The pond and filters were all built of concrete and concrete blocks, very sturdy and meant to last and all were then fibreglassed.
Over the years though I've made various alterations, including proper benching in the filters which reduced the filter capacity by 1000 gallons from 2,500 to 1,500 gallons in total.
I still had a couple of niggling problems though, which had been there since the start.
- The Vortex never completly drained. Poor design with the Vortex depth being deeper than the waste drain point.
- The inlet chamber had a flat bottom and all the crap used to lie up in there. This chamber has 3 x 4" bottom drain pipework coming into it plus a 3" side wall drain and instead of fitting isolation valves, I fitted push-fit pipe upstands. These enabled each drain to be isolated, just like a valve. Unfortunatly the flat bottom was a poor design. 11-years ago 4" ball valves were a fortune to buy each and as I needed 3 of them I saved a fair bit here, but built in a problem!
- This filter copes with a 5000 gallons per hour throughput and some of the pipes between each filter section are restrictive. I used 4" pipes between the Inlet and Vortex, but then these were fibreglassed inside, which reduced the size to about 3.5 inch.
Picture of the Vortex which doesnt drain properly. 3 x 4" inlets can be seen at the top, these coming infrom the inlet chamber. There were only 2 originally, I added a third a few years back when doing the filter benching.
[img]http://www.koipix.com/gallery/albums/userpi ... CN1215.JPG[/img]
This is the Inlet chamber with the pushfit upstands fitted. The flat bottom can be seen here. The 3" side wall drain was converted to take an Aquamax 15000 and to pump to my Bakki Shower a couple of years ago.
[img]http://www.koipix.com/gallery/albums/userpi ... CN1212.JPG[/img]
This shows the depth of this inlet chamber, 45" for those who cant read the tape measure.
[img]http://www.koipix.com/gallery/albums/userpi ... CN1210.JPG[/img]
So what was to be done - see next post
. I have decided that the settlement chamber had to go! All that lovely block work, render and fibreglass. I have got myself a nice square top vortex (picking it up in a couple of weeks) which I intend to cut a couple of holes for the 2x4" outlet and convert to use static K1. So all I have to do is to drop the water level, knock the existing settlement out and fit in the vortex and Bob's your uncle as it were. Easy pleasy hopefully.
I have a nice Red neck and ears from the sun after being stuck in the whole but hey we had a giggle.
