Herbie style overflow

[Chad]

I have a 90 degree elbow pointing down on the one which is valved.. maybe it is just trapping the air? but then, when I removed the elbow.. some air came out but it wasn't until I opened the gate valve that it started to flow again properly.

I am just not sure if it is normal for the valved line to stay un-operational until you reset it.

[mark]

not running a Herbie full time (just on my 33g QT) but never had a problem with the primary drain restarting, but then it was just a straight vertical pipe coming up from the bottom of the tank.

Could see having a down turned elbow causing a air lock.

[Black Phantom]

Sounds like trapped air to me. How close to the top of your overflow is the valve. It might be that there isn't enough water building up in the pipe after startup to push the air out.

[Whatigot]

would airline fed into the pipe solve this issue?

[Nevin]

Can you just remove the downturned elbow? If it's there to make your normal drain lower than the emergency drain then it won't work. How about an elbow turned upward on your emergency drain to make it higher instead?

Regards,
Nevin

[sphelps]

Pictures are amazing things, got any??

[JDigital]

Herbie should just be 2 straight stand pipe.. the emergency being taller than the main drain.. the main drain should be full submerged under water.

(for some reason it didn't upload vertically.. but u get the idea...