Simply Koi and More Koi

Hi,

I haven't been about much lately as busy at work etc. Was having a catch up on the forum last week and came accross Janes pond build using air uplifts, and then came accross Bobs post about the cost of bills etc, which got me thinking-Emma would kill me if we got a bill like that!. Well had today off work so thought id have a play with air uplifts etc. Ive always known about using air to move water but never thought that a few bubbles could be more effective than a pump.

So popped out this morning to get some air line, air stones and a manifold. Unfortunately i only had 32mm pipe and 50mm lying around (will experiment with 40mm later in the week) First i played around with airstones-i found the small cheap ones work best(about 1inch long) Next i tried a 90 degree bend on the end compared to a t piece and found the t piece to be more effective.

I then compared 32mm pipe against 50mm, using different numbers of uplifts all from a 70ltr air pump to see which was more efficent. This is what i found (aprox 1 inch head ):
50mm pipe:
Number of Uplifts - Litres Per Hour
2 - 5684
4 - 5837
8 - 9818

32mm pipe:
Number of Up lifts - Litres Per Hour
4 - 6000
6 - 10,800
8 - 12,000
10 - 10,800

I was amazed! With a 70 ltr air pump powering 8 uplifts i could achieve 12000 litres an hour with a 35watt air pump Compare that to an aquamax 12000 at 200 watts Now i known there are limitations-you cant lift much head so no good for showers or water falls, but for a gravity fed filter its perfect. And not only do you save 165 watts but you are adding 70 ltrs of air to the water at the same time!

Im sure with a bit more experimenting it can be made more effective, im going to try 40mm pipe next. Will also have to play around with the length of the up lift pipe and the height of the air stone in the uplift pipe!

Cheers Andy

so andy you have finally become a believer
i've held off posting about uplifts but as you say in your post for a very little wattage you can move massive amounts of water. allbeit only a head height of an inch or so.
heres a couple of pictures and vids of one bank of our pond.
this is the main filter uplift bank but there is an exact copy of this on the skimmer circuit.
weve used 40mm solvent pipe with 90deg bends. the pipes are 18inches long and the airstones are the cheep 1" type about 2iches from the bottom of the pipe.

both banks of uplifts run from the same airtech 80 air pump.
pic 1.
uplift tank made from fibreglass and mounted onto the side of the pond and glassed to seal it with the pond in a cut out in the pond wall 1inch higher than the water height of the pond

[img]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y199/vippy ... 2435-1.jpg[/img]
pic 2.
the air manifold made from blue waterpipe and 4mm airtaps

[img]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y199/vippy ... CF2431.jpg[/img]
pic 3.
the 8 uplifts.

[img]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y199/vippy ... CF2432.jpg[/img]
video of the uplifts. (its fairly short)

[url=http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y199/vippy ... CF2433.flv][img]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y199/vippy ... CF2433.jpg[/img][/url]
closeup of uplifts video( its fairly short)

[url=http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y199/vippy ... CF2434.flv][img]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y199/vippy ... CF2434.jpg[/img][/url]

hope this is of help.
i think with all the gravity fed systems around alot of us could save eleccy using this method of moving water.
plus your adding air to every gallon of water passing through your filter.

yes it wont work with showers but hey thats a different type of animal alltogether.

Hi Jane,

Yes you have certainly converted me!

The pond im building was going to run :
3x aquamax 1200 @ 200 watts each
2x Air pumps 70ltr @35 watts each
Total of 670 watts

I could run the same system using uplifts:
5xAir pumps 70 ltr @35 watts each
Total of 175 watts

So i can achieve the same turnover, have 210 litres of extra air per minute and save 495 watts. Plus you can save loads as air pumps are much cheaper than pumps.

Jane, can i ask where you got the air taps that are in the blue pipe? Do they just screw in? It looks nice and neat compared to masses of 6mm air line running from a pump!

I will probably still want to run a shower during the summer months, which will obviously require a pump, but the money i will have saved will more than pay for it!

Back to the drawing board now for the filters!

Cheers Andy

just buy one of these and unscreww the valves
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/12-WAY-QUALITY-AIR-PU ... 240%3A1318" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

if you think hard you dont have to rethink your filter you just add the uplift bay to the side of the pond instead of the pump and plumb a 4" pipe from the filter to the uplift bay.

Hi Jane,

Thanks for that-ive actually got a couple of broken manifolds lying around-i didnt realise the taps unscrew!

Am i right in thinking you have 14 uplift pipes running off of one 80 litre pump? Any idea how much water you are turning over? Ive yet to try 1 1/2inch pipes, i suspect this will be the best size to use.

With regards to the returns i was thinking about having the uplifts in the filter between bays an dthen rerturning the water by gravity through a four inch pipe to get a bit of flow along the bottom of the pond and also to keep the surface undisturbed. Although alot easier going straight over the wall-i suppose i could just switch off the returns.

Im still amazed at how much water it moves with just 35 watts!

Cheers Andy

Are you the only one that uses this method, its amazing really but I was thinking the same thoughts today as I thought about protein skimmers etc.
Never seen it before.

what are the specs of your pond and are there pics somewhere on the forum?

Andy:-
in answer to your questions.
no there are 18 uplift tubes running from the airtech80 pump, 9 on the main pond and 9 on the skimmer. no idea of flow (never thought of an accurate way of testing)

personally id put the uplifts right at the pond wall otherwise your having a half pgravity half pumped system. also youd be surprised how much of the flow from the tubes goes down into the pond and across the pond floor. plus we have an aerated bottom drain to aid the flow at the other end of the pond.

other Andy, yes its here
http://www.koiquest.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8060" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

the idea came from seeing how well a streamflow pond worked at cleaning the bottom using just 3 or 4 uplift tubes plumbed into the bottom of the pond
anyone is welcome to visit and see the running and as any questions.... we all are now feeling the pinch from the rise in energy costs....

Hi Jane, well done!
I really appreciate people in the hobby becoming more concerned about sensible use of energy and water. Airlift technology has been researched and applied in aquaculture during decades, and more recently in LHRAS (low head recirculating aquaculture systems). In the last few years there have been some good examples of successful application of airlifts in Koi ponds, yet they still are far from being popular.
I hope your experience will encourage many other hobbyists, we all should seek for a more sustainable use of energy and resources.
In Spain my friend and current president of the AEK, Jose Frutos, has been carrying out intensive applied research on airlifts. During the last couple of years, his 30,000 liter pond has been runing just on airlifts, everything being OK with a great electricity saving. He is still improving his system, having achieved more efficiency and testing a fully automatic cleaning system of static K1 in the mechanical filter.
Here is a link to an article he published in october 2007, it deals with testing airlift efficiency. I'm affraid it is in spanish, but have some clear graphs that no doubt will illustrate some of his main findings:
http://www.elkoi.es/index.php?option=com_co ... &Itemid=47" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Cheers,
Diego

hey Diago, thats some good information there.
40.000 litres using 41 watts of power is pretty good to me.
for anyone here in the UK wanting to read this in english then follow these instructions

1. open link in post above. (yes its in spanish)
2. open this link in another window http://babelfish.yahoo.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
3. copy the spanish URL and paste it in the "translate a web page" space.
4. select spanish to english from the drop down menu.
5. click translate.
hey presto you should now have the page in english....... or any other language you need!!!! even japanese
ALSO the internal link on the translated site automatically translates LOL

make for some good reading

Google do a translator too that works in the same way as Jane detailed above.

All this is very interesting and is really making me think about the best course for a pond filter. After seeing at first hand the amazing results showers can produce I was sold on my next pond being vortexes feeding into shower filters as the sole filtration with a static K1 filter on the skimmer but now I'm not so sure! This would certainly be a much cheaper option.

lets have a quest to find out how much power we are using on our pond
heres ours

use the link to get a calculation.

Do you mean this link Jane? [url]http://www.koidirectory.com/pondcalc.asp[/url]
Couldn't find it in your post.

I'm a bit scared to find out the truth....

ooooooooooop yes?
dont be afraid
its going to be bad and you know it

vippymini wrote:ooooooooooop yes?
dont be afraid
its going to be bad and you know it

I've gone wrong somewhere. My pond runs with two Sequence 750s and 1 Hailea Hiblow air pump and it reckons that's a little over £600 per year. That's nearly half our bill and I haven't even added the QT pond with an Aquamax (Eco) 4000 with 70ltr airpump and 2, 300W heaters on yet!!! I've gone wrong somewhere here!