Bean Animal drains not draining properly
 

I really need some help. I have been working on this for a looonnng time. Wife not so happy any more:( I finally tested my setup last night: big tank overflow onto kitchen floor.

My Bean Animal drain is not keeping up with my Hammerhead return pump, unless I throttle it back to a very very low rate. I overflowed it once when testing with tap water.

It’s a 72*30*24 glass display tank in the kitchen, and a similar size acrylic sump in the basement.

All lines are 1.5 “ flex PVC. They run down 14 feet to the basement sump, and run horizontally about 8-10 ft across a bedroom dropping about 8”, then into the basement shop/sump room where they run about 16.5 horizontal feet dropping about 6-7”, then a horizontal run of about 8 ft dropping 6 feet into the sump.

The gate valve on what is to be the main siphon is at the sump end of the drain. It is fully open. All ball valves are fully open.

The drains in the sump do not terminate under the water line, I guess I could try that. Surly that is not the problem.


All three drain lines together will not keep up with the pump, unless it's really dialed back to a slow flow. One by itself is supposed to drain the overflow at over 1000 GPH.

Is it the horizontal runs? That would mean a whole redesign of the basement, moving the sump across the sump room 15 feet.

Tom

Here is the return pump.

Can't seem to attach it.

Tom

My guess would be is that its your lines entering sump. They have to be just under the water level in your sump and they appear in pic to be above water level.

Yes, they are above the water level. I will have to retest with them below the level. I thought it did not matter.

Tom

Bean animal has no chance whatsoever of working if lines aren't under approx 1" or so. Don't go too far in either with them.

I am not sure about all the horizontal footage and total length of lines but definitely fix the lines in sump for starters.

Is all of the plumbing 1.5" or just the flex hose? The PVC fittings in the first picture look really small but maybe thats just because everything else looks so big.

Yes, they are all 1.5 flex, but reduced to 1" at the bulkhead. I think that is the original Bean Animal design. My used tank came with pre drilled 1" where I have the drains.

OK, hopefully putting them under water 2" in the sump will do it.

That is a bit scarey, as the main display will overflow at a high rate of flow if they were to somehow come out of the water in the sump.

Also, I thought I read of some people placing the safety emergency drain above the sump water level, so they could hear when it kicked in. But then it would not handle all of the flow by itself, which it is supposed to do?

Tom

How much flow is your hammerhead giving you after head pressure has been taken into account? Have you used this calculator to figure it out? http://reefcentral.com/index.php/head-loss-calculator The bean animal system says that it can handle up to 2000gph if done properly and a hammerhead should still be producing over 3000gph even at 17' depending on the model.

I figure close to 16ft of head. But then I dialed the pump down with the 1.5" gate valve just above the pump. It's only open about 3/4 of a turn (It's 8 turns lock to lock). I need to calculate the flow.

I submerged the lines, and tried again. It will run with the way I have it dialed down. The height in the overflow box changes a lot, even after ten minutes. The saftey drain kicks in now and then.

It also makes more noise than I had hoped for.

I turned it all off, tefloned the caps, tightened the bulkheads some more.

I just think it needs way more flow. I will calculate the flow next, based on how fast it fills a volume of water in the DT.

Tom