Bean Animal drains not draining properly

[braid11]

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