Plumbing critique

[viks]

Hi Guys.

Can you please take a quick look at my plumbing to see if its ok. Only thing that is not there is a piece of SPA FLEX on the drain pipe that takes the water down to the sump. Please shout out suggestions to make it better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/viks/5802533208/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/viks/5802533206/in/photostream/

cheers
Viks

 

[TellyFish]

Looks pretty straight-forward to me. Anything particular your worried about?

 

[muffe]

Looks fine to me. Perhaps you can shorten some hose to the reactor like this?

 

[viks]

I want to keep it simple, and i think i have the unions in the correct place so that i can pull it apart to clean...i'm gonna glue everything in, unless you think i shouldn't?

as far as the drain into the sump, should i use flex or pvc? also my water depth is gonna be around 8 inches in the drain/ skimmer section, how far should the pipe be submerged into the water level?

cheers
viks

 

[vorm]

I don't think it matters on the final piece of the drain line.
On mine I have a piece of PVC for it, and it is not even glued in, that way I can pull it off for easier cleaning and making it easier to pull my sump out if I ever need to. The way I see it is that even if that last piece of pipe were to pop off it's not going to hurt anything except cause lots of splashing and noise in my sump, and so far it's never come off.

I think it all looks good, but I agree with muffe's suggestion of shortening the line to the reactor to get it up and out of the way.

Do you only have one drain line or are there two going into that drain pipe? Reason I ask is because I feel that having a second one as a backup/emergency drain is a lot safer so that you don't have a flooded floor if the main drain ever gets clogged.

 

[viks]

Thanks. I only have 1 drain line. It's 1.5 inch. inside the overflow I have a durso standpipe, and on the end of that I have a little strainer to stop snails from crawling in. I hope that does the trick. If you think I should take the strainer off, let me know.

 

[muffe]

I don't think it's necessary to glue seeing as any small leak would trickle back into the sump.

 

[viks]

Thanks. How far down into the sump should the drain pipe be?

 

[kduen]

I would take the strainer off as any pieces of leftover food, algae, aptasia whatever can clog it up pretty quickly and then you will overflow the DT.

 

[d0ughb0y]

for unions positioned vertically, best to put the female side (the side the rotates) on top, so you let gravity work for you when putting it back together. that is, the female side will sit on top of the male side so you just rotate to connect.

 

[viks]

Thanks for the tip. I was wondering if there was a specific way of putting unions on.
I'm gonna cement everything in, except the last bit of pvc into the sump, and the flex pipe from the return pump to the first union, which is currently not in the picture. This way I can dissassemble easily, and clean.