To hard plumb, or not to hard plumb....that is the question

[Borchers]

Well the time has come to Finnish the tank build that is now 2 years old sitting in the house. I've decided to run 1 pump to feed both the main display and the Refugium display. I have run into a......well issue. Do I hard plumb the hole feed pump to mainland display or do I soft plumb the whole thing. I can run a half and half setup and go soft tubing to the display fuge. Then I can insert a gate valve to adjust the flow and run the main display wide open on a new DC pump. Thanks Chris G! I'm just stuck here. And to top it off Cadlights uses jacked up euro size pipe. I could rerun the whole thing and do a new dursa or Herbie and replace the bulkheads if I hard plumb it. Any thoughts???

Your Local Procrastinator here.

 

[cflow]

IMO, hard plumb it. You got a sweet setup. Finish it with a furniture grade color pvc.

 

[SammyJ916]

Soft, hard plumbing can be a nightmare! To do hard plumbing right can cost a lot and if something goes wrong or leaks it's much harder to replace or fix.

 

[Borchers]

Unions for repairs. Yes hard plumb gets costly and if you cut to short or to long it's all over and back to the store!

 

[madweazl]

It just looks so nice when it is hard plumbed cleanly. If you have flow constraints that make hard plumbing a liability, go another route but if you have the overhead, hard plumbing with furniture grade PVC sure can look sharp.

 

[79chopperdr]

Hard plumbing looks cool, but in the end
-it makes maintenance harder
-adjustments and changes to the system are more difficult
-it can be difficult to isolate pump vibrations and act like a speaker
-sharp 90's come with significant friction loss, wasting pump flow.

 

[Saltwaternooby]

Mine is hard plumb for the return but all the drains are soft.

 

[Borchers]

Hard plumb it is! Thanks peeps!