Herbie style overflow

[fkshiu]

Hmm, that's interesting. I've got a 90 and a 45 degree elbow on my Herbie main drain and it has never had any difficulty re-starting. A Herbie is completely gravity-based so it's hard to imagine a situation where one would not re-start as long as water was flowing downwards.

What sized pipe are you using? And how much flow do you have going through the overflow? Perhaps with narrow pipes and low flow the valve could be closed enough such that some slime or gunk creates a blockage???

[mark]

with the down turned elbow, you doing this style?

[Chad]

I am not doing Beananimal's style. The pipe I am using is 3/4" and the flow is less than 200 gph. So I am not sure why it is not restarting.. unless the air is being trapped too fast? I don't know how to solve this.. and at this point I do not want to redo everything. There is definitely no slime or gunk in it because this is all brand new piping.

Pics coming up.

[Chad]

Herbie-Drain-1.jpg

Herbie-Drain-2.jpg

Herbie-Drain-3.jpg

[sphelps]

drill a small hole (1/8") in the top of the elbow inside the oveflow on the main drain. The main problem is that the main drain isn't low enough and enough head pressure isn't building up to push the air out of the elbow.

[Chad]

Oh.. I see... I will give it a try and let you know what happens..

I was thinking of making a trip switch so I would have to physically reset/turn on the return pump in the event of a power outage. However, I would rather not have to resort to something like that.

[JDigital]

Btw... that definitely does not look like a herbie style..

It looks alot more like beananimals "style"... at least from what I can see in the pics..

[fkshiu]

You don't really have a "classic" Herbie overflow. I agree it's more like Bean's which is really just a modified Durso with an emergency drain.

A Herbie has drains on the bottom of the overflow box so the water can only flow one way: down. There is no air introduced into the system.

sphelps's solution should work, but you'll basically have a Durso which is a controlled way of introducing air into a drainage system.

Here's my Herbie:

[Chad]

Hmm, I obviously misunderstood the concept. I thought the whole idea was to just add a gate valve and dial it back to match the flow of the return pump?

Putting the drain into the bottom of the tank was not something I wanted to do and I am pretty sure I saw examples of people doing it the way I plumbed it as well.

I will drill the hole in the morning and see what happens. I did test it already with it matched and it is dead silent, just when it restarts after a shut down it doesn't start the main drain up.

Oh well... live and learn

[mark]

if the hole doesn't work, you might have the height for a classic Herbie (still can come from the back wall)

On you primary, rotate the elbow so it points up. Looks like you backup has a short nipple, may need to extend.