Volcano club

[Volcano1]

Tom,
Yes ,I have two , the one you think you have and the one with 100ish, no sure on the exact number . I believe the earlier produced models had the 48 pin wheel, which the pins are larger. this is what mine originally had.The One with more pins, the pins are much smaller, and carbon fiber. I think that there is also another one, don't know if it got released, that had a few less than the 100ish one, but had a higher watt draw, but was said to give better foam.

 

[prostaff]

Could the pump be running higher wattage without the alita feed simply because it cannot handle the head pressure? I know they say it can handle 32in?? of head pressure without a force feed and close to 84in with one but I am not convinced of this. I know my stock needle wheel pulled zero air at 48in of head pressure so I can't imagine doing anything dramatic at 32. I think these pumps would perform well on the much shorter reefflo skimmers they were designed for. Don't have any hard evidence...just a thought

 

[prostaff]

Just checked the orca 250 which is the biggest skimmer designed for the stock dart needlewheel. At 11.5 in wide and 32 in total height, it seems to me actual head pressure on this pump would be closer to 20in or less. Is this why I am having dificulty with this pump or am I overlooking something? I am assuming these 2 pumps are the same

 

[yeniraki]

"Via the pump's water input valve, slightly decrease the water intake, while venturi valve is full open and see what happens, there will be a tremendous increase in the air intake"

No body is going to admit and thank me, that they started to pump more air in to their skimmers after aplying the tweak I mentioned, yet??

 

[46bfinGA]

What effect would adding a second Dart achieve(besides adding to the elec. bill)? I have been contemplating if it would actually help or not. Mine is a 12" diameter body with a 30" tall reaction chamber so the pump can almost handle the height itself. Once the water level gets to the neck the air shuts down. I have been using an Alita 40 to make up the difference but the bubble size gets bigger and more turbulant no matter how much I bleed the air off. Frustrating

I am using the stock Dart NW Impellar that Sequence makes and was wondering if a new impellar would help the pump get just a bit more height out of it without cavitating.. I would love to not use the Alita, I think that would make this skimmer very consistant.

 

[prostaff]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13519741#post13519741 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by 46bfinGA
What effect would adding a second Dart achieve(besides adding to the elec. bill)? I have been contemplating if it would actually help or not. Mine is a 12" diameter body with a 30" tall reaction chamber so the pump can almost handle the height itself. Once the water level gets to the neck the air shuts down. I have been using an Alita 40 to make up the difference but the bubble size gets bigger and more turbulant no matter how much I bleed the air off. Frustrating

I am using the stock Dart NW Impellar that Sequence makes and was wondering if a new impellar would help the pump get just a bit more height out of it without cavitating.. I would love to not use the Alita, I think that would make this skimmer very consistant.

Interesting.. So at least I know it's not just my dart doing that. I thought of adding another pump myself but it seems that if I am only getting 1/10th the air I was expecting from the skimmer(at that height), 2 pumps at the same head pressure would mean 2 * 1/10 at the cost of twice the electric consumption. 1/5th air production at twice the price is not that appealing to me. If there was a way to connect the pumps inseries, that would boost the head pressure capacity but I doubt needle wheels were designed to take in that much air at the intake of the pump. Seems like the solution would be stronger pump or shorter skimmer

 

[jnarowe]

Some very interesting comments and I have to agree that based on the info. provided so far, there may be just too much head for this pump, and that could easily translate to why so many are having similar problems.

Tom and I discussed this at length and here is more annecdotal evidence to support that.

 

[Sparkss]

sounds like the stock reeflo NW is not going to be the silver bullet I am looking for, but it may resolve some issues I am having with our NW malfunctioning (sheared pins, etc).

To add a little to this I went out and measured our skimmer (because it has that shortened body to fit our setup). The body (from flange to flange) is 32", the skimmer overall (from bottom to the twistlock) is 53". I measured to there because that is roughly where I keep our water level at. So that is the head height that both the Alita and Dart need to deal with.

I believe that Energy has a hammerhead or barracuda recirc pump on his ? (I would need to dig back through to find that info to be 100% sure). I also recalled Hahn talking about exploring using a higher powered NW pump on the Volcanos. One thing I keep coming back to in my head is another comment that Hahn had made about the 8" neck on the 18 series Volcanos not being able to support much more air than what the Alita 40 was providing. So it seems that the recirc pump/NW is where we need to focus to get these skimmers performing (not that I relish spending another $350+ for a new pump, but as are others, I am at wits end)

P.S. I woke up to a cavitating pump again this morning, and it was working fine when I went to bed. I adjusted the dart out to 140W to see if that would be more stable or not.

 

[jnarowe]

I understand that somewhere there is a Hammerhead NW and you should be able to sell the Dart without much problem.

 

[Sparkss]

It's a Baldor Dart, so I may actually replace my return pump w/ it. I have the Super Dart for the return, but bought it before they started offering the Baldor pumps again, and IIRC the only difference between a Dart and Super Dart is the impellor (which I can easily swap over). Then the old Super Dart would become my backup (which now is just a regulart Dart (w/ an AO Smith motor) that I picked up a while back.

But I am getting way ahead of myself there. First things first, I need some level of confidence that the hammerhead NW would actually help my cause .

 

[Nanook]

I think the Hammerhead would definitely help! If I hadn't found a fix for my skimmer that would have been my next step.

 

[Sparkss]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13457029#post13457029 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Volcano1
Sparkss,
Box height 7"
The height from the base box to the flange is 5"
Top of bottom flange to the flange for the cone is 29"
Top of the body cone to neck flange, cone length, 8"
Neck is 8" diameter 13"
So does this make it an 1860?

That pretty much sounds like the dimensions of our skimmer (as I just posted a couple of posts up)

Nanook

what are the dimensions of your skimmer again ?




Does anyone have a link to where I can find a Hammerhead NW pump to purchase ?

 

[Nanook]

My skimmer is 18" diameter by 60" tall. The neck is 8".

Funny, I was just coming here to see who sells the Hammerhead NW

I am wondering also if the bubble plate is necessary or could be modded so the air/water mixture doesn't jet through them so turbulently.

 

[Nanook]

A better built pinwheel for either the Dart or Hammerhead would do wonders as well so we could get rid of the old mesh mod.

 

[Nanook]

OH, and fwiw, I am adding a MTC HSA-5000 quad beckett skimmer to my 1000 gallons of saltwater. It processes the tank volume 3-4x/hour versus less than 1x/hour.

 

[lvpd186]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13522331#post13522331 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Nanook
My skimmer is 18" diameter by 60" tall. The neck is 8".

Funny, I was just coming here to see who sells the Hammerhead NW

I am wondering also if the bubble plate is necessary or could be modded so the air/water mixture doesn't jet through them so turbulently.

I was wondering if eliminating the bubble plate all together would help reduce the head pressure (or adding a lot more holes)

 

[Nanook]

I have quite a few holes in mine so I don't think that is a huge factor, but I do think the water jetting through the holes causes some turbulence. I think my biggest issue with my skimmer is the turbulence that I see at the top of the foam head which pops the bubbles too fast.

 

[Volcano1]

Wish I had an expert that could look at my 1860 and see if is doing what it should.I seem to be having better results than some, or it could be my take on things.Would additional pics or a video show enough?

 

[mavgi]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13522414#post13522414 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Nanook
I have quite a few holes in mine so I don't think that is a huge factor, but I do think the water jetting through the holes causes some turbulence. I think my biggest issue with my skimmer is the turbulence that I see at the top of the foam head which pops the bubbles too fast.

how you feed the skimmer through the pump or direct to the body ?

 

[Nanook]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13522492#post13522492 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mavgi
how you feed the skimmer through the pump or direct to the body ?

I have a Panworld 150PS that pushes 790gph at 4ft of head as the feed pump into the bottom side of the skimmer.

FWIW, I am just tweaking or thinking of things that could make the skimmer work better, but my skimmate for a week was about 2-3 gallons of dark green water with heavy sludge at the top of the skimmer neck. It is definitely working well the way it is set right now. FWIW#2, I went back to the full size airline tubing instead of the 1/4" with the Alita 40 airpump and I see no difference on the foam head.