New Overflow/Sump question....

ameares8

www.mearesdesign.com
Ok, so I have been trying to get around to building my sump for 5 or 6 months now. I have finally tried a few techniques and have failed. I am trying to create an overflow for a 55 gallon. I have the return side setup with a maxijet 1200 pumping the water up from the sump into my skimmer which dumps that water into the tank. This is flawless, however my PVC overflow did not work as well as I thought.

Would a HOB filter with ¾" hose shoved into the bottom of it serve well? Here are my thoughts on how this would work. Any thoughts, suggestions, or otherwise are appreciated. I am on a budget, so this is why I am not going to go buy more supplies for now.

1.) The siphon from the motor would fill the box.

2.) The ¾" pipe would sit 2" tall in the box. After the water filled over this it would start to drain into the sump.

3.) If the power were to fail, then the water would drain until it got below the pipe. Would the siphon break from the intake tube though?

4.) Should drain pipe sit in the water in the sump or can it hover over the water and my bio ball/media box that I want it to splash on to?

I want to try this tonight, but I do not want to drill until I have suggestions. Thanks guys and gals.
 
Wow, interesting thought..... Seems like it would be noisy (at least noisier than a regular overflow what with the pump running) but a neat idea. Curious to see how it works out.
 
Actually, been thinking of it some more, but I don't think that it is possible to actually establish a siphon with one of those, they just flow a certain amount of water. And something like an emperor 400 (pretty big) only flows 400gph.
 
That is a good point. I have found some other sites with other posts regarding this and some say it works, but others think it is a total waste. It seems that I would need to add a "U" tube in the box and add a baffle where the intake on the HOB is. It seems there are a few modifications needed, but it is feasible. It does not work as I thought it would though. I will give this a shot and post what happens.

Feel free to add anything while I am attempting this on the first HOB. The motor does not work on this one, so I will merely use it as a test dummy for the "U" tube and drain rate.
 
That is what I need. I don't have any "extra" cash at the moment, so I was trying to do a DIY overflow without spending any extra cash. If this fails I will get the overflow when I get some cash. I will more than likely do that down the road anyway. I just thought I would give this a shot. Thanks for the link.esx
 
It works!...kind of. I need to use 2 maxi jet 1200's to get the flows matched, but that is the only difference. I started off by hooking my MJ 400 onto the u tube going into my HOB overflow box. This worked, but obviously it did not match the return flow of the 1200. Problem solved and there is NO noise at all. Now I need to buy a second MJ 1200 of my own. I will post pics of this if anyone is interested.
 
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