Ed's filter's K1 conversion

[Bob Hart]

Ed,

Have you thought about having a holed 4" pipe going from front to back in the static chamber to act as the transfer pipe? This will mean the K1 would be around the 4" pipe and it would then go through the 8mm holes into the 4" pipe and then the water comes out of the end into the next chamber?

[eds]

Hi Ed,

Yes its surprising what you can find when removing old media from filters

One of the problems with long chambers is if you are drawing from one end you can get a build up of K1 at that end,i wonder if you did set up some smaller chambers withing it sectioned off if this would work better with smaller air rings in them.

What size air pump are you using and how much K1

Hi Gazza,
I think that may be the only permanent solution to the problem! I've changed the pump intake strainers to drilled land drain pipes and this has improved the clumping slightly. I'm going to try re-arranging the air flow today and see what effect it has getting the K1 tumbling against the flow rather than corkscrewing along the chamber as it does at the moment!

I've got a 60lpm Hailea diaphragm pump and there's currently about 50-60l in there (about 25l of already mature media and about 25-35l of new media). (The rest of the new media is in the static section and the other half of the mature is still in the QT filter while the BHM in there matures.) The chamber itself is about 200l capacity when the pond is at the normal level.

[eds]

Ed,

Have you thought about having a holed 4" pipe going from front to back in the static chamber to act as the transfer pipe? This will mean the K1 would be around the 4" pipe and it would then go through the 8mm holes into the 4" pipe and then the water comes out of the end into the next chamber?

Hi Bob,
I did think about a pipe initially but as the weir to the fluidised chamber is so high half the pipe would be out of the water. I'm thinking of putting another full height didvider in with slots cut in top 6" or so to solve the problem there.

[eds]

Well I think I've solved both issues today.

For the static clogging, I saw three air bricks in B&Q today. They will be just right when cut down and have a huge open area as the very solid slots are edge on to the flow. They also slot together to make a nice solid barrier. I'm going to cut them to the right length tomorrow and then attach them to the current Acrylic divider. I was thinking to glue it but I'm thinking to cable tie it now so it's easily removable and won't restrict the flow any. If it works well then I'll cut the Acrylic out into a few large holes to ease the water flow even more.

For the fluidised section, I found a length of black, corrugated land drain pipe. It's about 3" diameter and slightly flexible so I can cut it to the exact width of the chamber and flex it over the pump feeds sticking through the filter wall. I have taken the temporary lily basket off and drilled out lots of 4mm holes in the sunken sections of the pipe only meaning no K1 can actually get to the holes as the raised sections are about 5mm apart and keep it away.

This helped, but didn't solve the problem so today I've re-arranged the air flow. I've now got a grid in the base of the chamber; a bit like this,

_______________________________
l..........l...........l....................l
l..........l...........l....................l
l..........l...........l....................l
l..........l...........l....................l
l_______l________l______________l
(Ignore the fullstops; spaces didn't work!)

The only bits with holes in are the vertical parts of the above diagram, running across the chamber.

This means that the strong air flow around the ends circulates the K1 back into the centres and keeps it fluidised. I just need to drill one or two holes in the longer section to keep that fluidised properly, but it's all good!

Cleaned the static section today and still amazed at the amount of crud it's catching. How long will it need this regular cleaning? I'm hoping it'll settle down before I go back to school!

[Gazza]

Hi Ed,

I thought you was a bit old for school mate

When i first converted my vortex to static i couldn't believe how much "stuff" was coming out and i thought i had a clean system it is surprising how long it will take to settle down but you will be well pleased once its all sorted

[eds]

Cheers mate,
Feel too old for school at the moment that's for sure!

Loving the K1 already now it's working ok. And it's almost a pleasure to clean it! Think I might have to put some sound insulation under the decking though as it's churning away noisily and don't want to disturb the neighbours!