New Shower

[emmaandaj]

Hi All,

Been a busy day installing my new shower-why on earth i didnt spend a bank holiday monday in the pub like normal people i dont know! Its been a very wet, cold and smelly day Anyway big thanks for Stu who came over and helped out

Ive been looking to simplify my 500 gallon growing on pond filters for a while. I wanted to use a shower with some kind of prefilter. Unfortunately with a 2inch bottom drain im unable to gravity feed to a prefilter before pumping over a shower so my options are very limited. I looked at the pressurised filters and vortex's but everyone who uses them have given very bad feed back. I first tried mounting a sieve before the filter (up on a shelf) but found it clogged very quickly and was totally impractical to clean due to not being accessable.

Sieve Before shower.

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ure073.jpg[/img]

I removed this and was somewhat stumped! Whilst at the holland show i saw smething that gave me an idea, after many restless nights pondering on the idea i started to build a shower based around one of Bob showers but with a built in prefilter.

Shower built from plywood

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... rad001.jpg[/img]

Bottom of prefilter-sloping to waste drain (filled with concrete)

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... rad003.jpg[/img]

Shower tiers

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... rad004.jpg[/img]

Prefilter

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... rad006.jpg[/img]

Tiers

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... rad005.jpg[/img]

Bob kindly fibreglassed the shower for me-what a fantastic job he has done! Think Bob wishes he'd said no, but he had said he likes a challenge!

Grill fitted over waste with air ring

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver042.jpg[/img]

4 Inch spray bar fitted with tank connector

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver043.jpg[/img]

Glass fitted

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver044.jpg[/img]

New pipe work pumped straight from bottom drain

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver031.jpg[/img]

Shower up and running

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver030.jpg[/img]

Static k1 being fluidised for cleaning

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver034.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver033.jpg[/img]

Touch wood all seems to be working fine at the moment

Andy

[Geoff9]

Hi Andy
Hope that works out for you it does look a cracking design..well done

[Myles]

BRILLIANT IDEA.

[eds]

That's fantastic! Brillliant idea and love the way you can see how much dirt is in there through the glass! You might just need an algae magnet to keep it clean!

[Gazza]

Hi Andy,

i know Bob said it was fun doing this one and it will be interesting to see how it performs.

[carlejo]

That's one of the best things I've seen on here, very impressed.....I particularly like the way you've made the static K1 viewable so you can really see when it needs a clean and how clean it is when it's been done!!
I don't know if I've missed this bit, how does the K1 not go into next chamber(shower area), what's stopping it ?
cheers
Carl

[vimes]

hi
fantastic m8 and some nice fiberglassing Bob i predict that some UK manufacture will see this and have the first one for sale for £895 by the start of next season
regards
lee
Hey bob how about you getting in there first and makeing a few quid for pond running costs just an idea m8

[Bob Hart]

Lee,

You might have noticed that Gazza said this was 'fun' to do, well he missed out all the swear words and I'm sure I never mentioned Fun. Nightmare came to mind and it took and actual age to fibreglass all that Andy had made and get it looking pretty good.

It's a bit like those showers I 'used' to make, takes far longer than any profit I made, bit of a labour of love really

[Louie]

VERY Impressive! I can see a lot of Koi-Questers sitting down and planning to use a similar design. Hope you don't have too much planned over summer Bob!
Are you using proper BHM in the shower?

Louie

[emmaandaj]

Hi All

Gazza-"Fun" wasn't what Bob said to me!

Carl-I have used a Stainless steel 4 inch Strainer on the other side of the tank connector

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver036.jpg[/img]

Lee-£895 i recon you'd have to double that to get Bob to do that again

Bob-Really great job-i cant even begin to understand how hard it must of been. What with this and the qt (lots of fiddly bits ) I doubt you will say yes next time! I promise next time it will be a 6000 gallon pond with lots of flat walls and lots of room! Thanks again Mate

Louie-im using the blagdon ceramic media i had in my old shower-i will be upgrading to bhm when funds allow. Ive actually really over filled the tiers (this shower is smaller than Bob's ones-will remove some media at the weekend to get the water crashing through!

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver037.jpg[/img]

Regards Andy

[emmaandaj]

Hi,

I kept checking the shower all yesterday and a couple of times in the night as i was worried it might block up and over flow. Was up an hour early to check and everything look ok, infact left it til i got home from work. Heres some pics of it being cleaned-quite a bit of muck came out which is good (did stir up a lot of muck yesterday when messing around and couldnt see the fish by the end of the day) The water is cleaner than ive ever seen it-however i am still running the gravity fed filter for the time being as well and i had backed the feeding right off for the last week as i knew i would be messing around with the filters and was worried about the water parameters.

Being fluidised

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... r030-1.jpg[/img]

Muck flushed away

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... r031-1.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a340/emma ... ver032.jpg[/img]

Andy