Air Up Lifts

[Andy H]

It`s all proportionate...... any container, resting in the water to take the weight.

[emmaandaj]

Hi Guys,

Just been making up the uplift sections for my filter. Decided to try them to see what output i was getting. Im using 70cm 2inch uplift pipes with a 4oltr secoh air pump. Using standard japanese air stones and 6mm air line i found:

5 uplifts produced 11,700 lph
6 uplifts produced 16,875 lph
7 uplifts produced 19,000 lph

Unfortunately i only had 7 air stones but am confident that i will need a few more as the more uplifts being run the better the performance has gone up so far.

Will try and get some more airstones and retest.

I actually tryed the above test without air stones and found it a lot worse. The fine bubbles created with the air stones helped push the water out. Im sure last time i tested i found hardly any difference but i was using cheap nasty air stones.

Andy

[okome]

Hallo emmaandaj.
What kind of japanese airstones? Name and size please. How did you guys distribute the air? With valves, Ts, manifolds? More details please. Some pictures maybe? It´s a very good result.
Elias

[Limey]

Excellent work Andy! Will be loking forward to what else you find out and to see pics and details like stone type etc... don't want much do I heh . Seriously, this is very very impressive and absolutely going to be factored into my Pond build - am wondering if you put a secoh 120 on what the reult would be... 3 x 4x less than 3x... great info!

Regards Dave

[Andy_T]

We've been using Airlifts in our company for 20 odd YRs to circulate effluent in our BIOtec packaged domestic sewage treatment plants, you'd be surprised how high you can actually lift using one - its all about the 'dip-ratio' - ie the deeper you put the pipe into the water the higher the pressure in the pipe and the higher you can lift water using air. I'll see if i can find some piccys.

[fair1535]

Hi Andy
Have u managed to locate some pics and any more info concerning your experiences with this subject.
Regards
Steve

[Andy H]

not been on this site for a while but filter on QT in shed has been running 6 months with air uplifts in filter, only way really cos filter was "adapted" when I got it so water seeps in from all 4 chambers in CL1 when water gets low so it doesnt all go through the k1 unless air uplifted! rUNNING ON A 60lph AIR PUMP WHICH POWERS (OOOPS caps lock)! about 6 small round air stones in filter and 2 long ones in tank and 1 2" round in resevoir which holds water ready to dump into filter when I drain some!

[luke frisbee]

yes it is me.


and the reason I am posting is because it appears to me (and all others that have invested anytime into airlifts) that they are a great economic improvement for the hobby.
they are also better than pumps because
there are no moving parts in the water
no electricity near the water
the chance of injuring a fish is minimized due to lower pressures
they off gas nitrogen as well as introduce oxygen
the air pumps are must less likely to be damaged from the pond water level dropping

I have converted to an airlift system.
as some of you may remember I built a 51 thousand US gallon lake/pond with my own little hands (mostly) and plumbed in Eight 4" bottom drains to an 11.5 ft vortex chamber with a 6" exit pipe to a 52 ft x 3.5 ft x 3.5ft raceway, which emptied back to the pond through a 3 square foot opening between the two.
i did this thinking it would be a grand pond for me. Well imagine my dilemma when it came to finding a way to move the water and pay the energy bill.
I first put all my effort into propeller pump technology...even to the point of paying for one to be fabricated...thankfully the company agreed that the pump was not what they had thought it would be and returned 80% of the purchase price....
But then i was up at Quality koi farm in New Jersey and Matt McCann almost off-handedly commented that i could move all the water in the world for very little money with an airlift. matt never lied to me so i had to give it a try.
And it works like a sumbitch...
here is the thread on koi-bito showing what I did...it isn't by any means fine tuned...but it moves a fantastic bit of water. i am looking at roughly 25-40 thousand gallons an hour for 86 watts at 120 volts.
http://www.koi-bito.com/forum/main-foru ... stion.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Btw an easier way to measure the out put of an airr lift pipe would be to get the biggest plastic trash bag you can find and just hold it securely around the airlift opening. Mark the time it takes it to fill a good amount and then take it off while keeping the water inside the bag floating at the surface of the pond, and then take a measuring container and empty it.
The math would be simple enough.

[luke frisbee]

here is a great article on how come none of us can figure out the exact flows when we start playing with airlifts
http://geyserpump.com/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=97" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[psylee]

hi new to the board but been readin a bit.
so let me get this right then say if i put an airline into the pond and shove it slightly into the bottom 4 inch drain i already installed a while agothat would push more volume up my 4 inch gravity fed system rather than just let gravity take its course?
am i reading into this right.
atm i have a 4 inch bottom drain going into 8 bay filter sytem with a 2800 gallon pump dragging it through a 2 inch outlet and sending it back into the pond via a uv filter and a 2 inch return.at times it seem like theres not enough volume coming into the filter as sometimes the pump gulps as its waiting for more water (only odd time this happens).so what im thinking it to avoid this happening at all if i put another airline into the pond and sit it just inside the bottom drain in the pond would this increase the volume of water going up the botton drain pipe into the filter ?


thanks again for this interesting reading

lee

[ageinghippy]

Hi Lee,

Welcome to Koiquest.

You have got the wrong idea of `airlifts`, I`m afraid. The whole idea is to find a way of moving water into your filter, without having the running costs of a pump. It also does away with the need for a bottom drain.

If you go to page one of this thread, `vippymini` has some photo`s that will show you how her pond has been set up with airlifts.

Hope this helps.

Chris

[psylee]

hi thanks for the reply
i understand how and what airlifts do im just thinking of incorporating it within my system ie:helping move the water more quickly up the bottom drain into the filter.
so what i was thinking is if i put a few airstones into the botton drain inlet would this help push more volume or at least help move more volume up the pipe into the chamber.
just somthing i was thinking it may help do.
not sure if it would just was thinking it may do.

thnaks again
lee

[Andy H]

Not sure of your set-up but if you could explain it a bit then help will come but you dont need air stones in the bottom drain but in the up lift part to your filter.

If you put a pipe in your pond to "near the bottom" and put an air stone in the pipe a few inches up from the bottom of the pipe and the top of the pipe was just above the surface then the air bubbles coming up would bring water flow with it.

A bit like a home made foam fractioner.

[GDL]

Hi,

wasn't sure whether to bump this old thread or start a new one.
I am looking to have pump-free ponds with the new ones now under way (after what seems an age, digging started last week).

Having read everything I can find I am still unsure what size lifts to have and whether before or after the filter.

I found an Excel spreadsheet on a US site giving the amount of air required to move a given volume of water up a given size pipe.

I have added a more friendly front end on it.
It seems to contradict some of what I have read here.
Unfortunately I can't upload spreadsheets here to let you see - anyone know how to allow this?

My big dilemma is whether to put the lift on the riser from my bottom drain, or on the return to the pond.
The riser from the bottom drain has advantages in that it is deeper, so I can get the air further below the water surface, so can lift more water for the same amount of air.

Ideally I would use the whole 110mm pipe as the lift, but the spreadsheet says I will need over 3 times more air to lift the same amount of water than if I use a smaller pipes.

The sweet spot seems to be 32-50mm diameter lifts.

According to the spreadsheet, to move 5000 lph where the air is injected 1m down and the required lift is 100mm.

32mm pipe requires 35 lpm
40mm pipe requires 34 lpm
50mm pipe requires 38 lpm
75mm pipe requires 63 lpm
110mm pipe requires 122 lpm

Now ideally I want to move twice this as the pond will be about 14000l.

I could get 3 x 40mm pipes down the centre of the 110mm pipe, or as many as 7 x 32mm, so in theory could move all that I need to.

Can anyone see any disadvantage in having smaller diameter pipes in the feed to the filter?
I can only think of blanket weed (which I hope to avoid).

As has been mentioned several times, the amount of lift required makes a HUGE difference.
Theoretically you can lift up to 50% of the distance the air injection is below the water surface.
So you could lift 500mm with a 1m injection - flow would be very low though. A bit like the max head figure for a pump.

Reducing the lift in my example to 50mm, but keeping the 1m submergance, more than doubles the flow.
So, according to the spreadsheet I can get 10000 lph through a 40mm pipe with 33 lpm of air - this I do find hard to believe!
Or, 5000 lph with only 18 lpm of air

If I go for the lift on the return, I can only get about 750mm submergance.
In my first example with 5000 lph and 100mm lift this increase the air required from 34 to 43 lpm
And in the last with 50mm of lift it increase from 18 to 22 lpm.

I hope this adds to the information pool, rather than just be my ramblings

Has anyone else's experience moved things on and does anyone have any ideas as to my before or after the filter quandary?

Thanks

G

[Andy H]

I think you need more pipes and stones for the one air pump.

I used a 60L pump and about 8 air lifts/stones

Mine wasnt in pipes though but a bodge filter in the shed with limited room.

Not been on this site for ages but there is one member done a glass pond above ground and used air to move, try and find that one for info.

Andy