Basement sump room - Advice?

[Whaledriver]

Your mixing head pressure and flow

If you are restricting the flow down to the basement at some point you wont have maximum flow. At that point the head pressure will reach its limit because of the height of the pipe to the basement. The pipe is full. To get more flow into the basement you need a bigger pipe.

To create a skimmer powered by gravity.........Just my hair brained thoughts...............
You want a constant head pressure on the venture. You need a flow that is always more than the skimmer venture can handle. This will let you have a flow by-pass to keep the head constant on the skimmer venture.

So.............Have the feed water(to the basement) to the skimmer fed from a upstairs sump where the intake is always under water. This gives you a constant bubble free head of water

Have a second pipe to the basement to carry the rest of the flow to the basement and act as a extra flow path when the skimmer flow is off.

Then after this you need the return pipe.

 

[tgunn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15053267#post15053267 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by NewbeeReefer
The sump is going to be in a shared room with the water heater. I've done some research, and it seems some people with the same setup suffered from low PH issues until they ran a fresh air intake to their skimmer. I have a brand new power vented water heater that blows the CO directly outside. The low PH might not even be an issue. I'll run the skimmer first without the fresh air line and see what happens.

Unfortunately there is no way for me to avoid the sump and water heater being in the same room.

Thanks for the advice so far everyone!

The thing I'd be worried about with the sump and water heater in the same room is the humidity and salt spray. I found everything in my fish room that was metal rusted. At the very least I'd be sure to protect the tank from splashes and mist from the sump. You'd be amazed how much salt somehow makes it airborne.

Tyler

 

[Whaledriver]

You could cover the sump/spaying part of the basement area and have a fan the exhausts that air directly outside 24/7

 

[tgunn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15079870#post15079870 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Whaledriver
You could cover the sump/spaying part of the basement area and have a fan the exhausts that air directly outside 24/7

If I were doing it all over again I'd have completely sealed off my fish room and used an HRV to continually exchange air from indoors to out. I'd have also used a standalone airconditioner for that room alone. Finally I'd have set up my canopy so that air was sucked out of the canopy and dumped into the fish room, and replaced with "fresh" air from the fish room. This would keep all the humidity and heat from the system confined to the fish room which would be well ventilated.

 

[BeanAnimal]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15053069#post15053069 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by NeveSSL
Match up the size of the return with the size output from your pump. If you size it larger than your pump, you'll be putting unnecessary head pressure on your pump and will be losing flow for reason.

For return pumps, check out the Reeflo and Panworld pumps.

Brandon

In fact, the opposite is true

The return piping should be larger than the output of the pump.

"Head pressure" is comprosid of the "vertical head" and "friction head".

Given the same volume of flow, a smaller pipe has a higher fluid velocity and therefore more friction. Increasing the pipe diameter reduces the fluid velocity and reduces the friction, reducing the overall total head pressure that the pump sees.

In other words, the larger the output pipe, the better the pump will perform.

You appear to be confused by the "weight" of the water contained in a larger pipe. Remember, that the pressure on the pipe is a function of the height of the column of water, not the width of the column of water. A 1 sqaure foot window in the side of a 6' deep swimming pool has exactly the same pressure on it as a 1 square foot window in the side of a 6' deep lake

 

[BeanAnimal]

doh...

I see a few others already offered a correction

 

[BeanAnimal]

In any case... as others have said:

Deal with the temp and humidity!

What else?

A floor drain and provisions for the inveitibale flood. That means 2-3" of sealed tile or similar wall curbing and a door curb. A wet sink and work area are also a must.

Don't skimp on the electrical, add twice as many outlets as you think you will need. Make each an individual GFCI instead of using multiple outlets on a single GFCI or GFI breaker.

Make it easy to clean... things tend to get nasty quickly.