Bean animal drain height?

[Ocelaris]

I just re-cut the emergency drain so it's about a half inch below the euro bracing and half inch above the weir. The main and open channels despite the pictures are 1" and 2" below the weir, so I'm going to leave them for now and re-cut if there is noise as it's easy to do at any point. Thanks all for the help, hopefully others will stumble upon this in the future.

 

[User]

In my Synergy Shadow overflow I have my main submerged with about an inch of water above the top of the elbow so it is a full siphon and drawing no air at operating water height. My secondary is positioned where the water level is about even with bend on the elbow. It only occasionally drains water if the water level rises for some reason in my overflow box. The emergency is positioned about 1/2 - 3/4" above the operating water level.

Sounds extremely similar to mine.

I’m having an issue with water noises from the fall between the teeth and the water level in the outside box. It comes up to about 2/3 the height of the bulkhead holes. Any higher, and my emergency fails to gain full siphon and I flood the floor.

Where in relation to the bulkhead holes is your water level in the outer box, and how loud is the water coming over the weir?

The drains themselves are totally silent- this is just splashing from the weir, and it’s annoying my wife since this tank is in her full time office and I told her it would be silent

 

[Sierra_Bravo]

Sounds extremely similar to mine.

I’m having an issue with water noises from the fall between the teeth and the water level in the outside box. It comes up to about 2/3 the height of the bulkhead holes. Any higher, and my emergency fails to gain full siphon and I flood the floor.

Where in relation to the bulkhead holes is your water level in the outer box, and how loud is the water coming over the weir?

The drains themselves are totally silent- this is just splashing from the weir, and it’s annoying my wife since this tank is in her full time office and I told her it would be silent

The water level exiting on mine is also filling 2/3 of the height of the bulk head opening. I run Maxspect XF250 gyres, and occasionally when they ramp up to a high RPM it will raise the height of the water against the weir and I'll get a little noise like yours - from the weir and not the overflow. Otherwise I am completely silent.

 

[Engloid]

please delete this post. It won't let me edit to change the pic.

 

[cracker]

I had to experiment with differing heights before O got it where I liked. 3 things . the secondary has to be tall enough to raise the water just ove the bulk heads leaving the tank ,The emergency just a little taller. then experiment with the primary height . worked for me but took a while.

 

[Engloid]

This is what you want for your water levels.

 

[lapin]

I just re-cut the emergency drain so it's about a half inch below the euro bracing and half inch above the weir. The main and open channels despite the pictures are 1" and 2" below the weir, so I'm going to leave them for now and re-cut if there is noise as it's easy to do at any point. Thanks all for the help, hopefully others will stumble upon this in the future.

looks good to me. 1 " drop for the secondary should work unless you have very high flow. Figure in the part of the pipe "U" that is allows for a partial flow in the secondary, you have 1 1/2" drop maybe? You can raise this if needed as you say, as long as you dont glue stuff in. If the main sucks bubbles, it can be lowered.

 

[lapin]

I do have a question for the bean experts; I have never figured out why the drilling of a fitting and insertion of the airline tubing in the secondary. My thinking says as long as that hole is on top and above the water level, that is all that's needed. If the main clogs water rises and covers the hole then the secondary becomes full siphon.

 

[Antics]

Just a shot in the dark here (I dont use the tubing so not sure) but I believe the tubing is a requirement when the main and secondary drain are the same height. The tubing prevents the secondary drain from achieving/breaking full syphon constantly which would be annoying etc.

 

[Ocelaris]

I ended up raising the drain heights as even a few inches made unacceptable noise. Now the drain height is about a half inch under the weir and besides the 4x gyres sloshing water around, is nearly silent.

Thanks everyone for the input.

 

[Breadman03]

I do have a question for the bean experts; I have never figured out why the drilling of a fitting and insertion of the airline tubing in the secondary. My thinking says as long as that hole is on top and above the water level, that is all that's needed. If the main clogs water rises and covers the hole then the secondary becomes full siphon.

The air line really just enables us to set the height at which the secondary switches to a siphon. When you can adjust the height of your pipes so that the operating level of the water doesn't cause the secondary to bounce between an open channel and a siphon, you don't need the air line.

I only have an internal box with all three pipes coming through the back at the same height, so I need an air line. If my siphon was a bit lower, I could skip that part and just use a drilled hole in the open channel.

 

[Ocelaris]

Thanks, good point. I'm not sure how high I'll keep the water level, but it's unlikely to rise much past the top of the open channel if at all. I drilled a straight piece of 1 1/2" pvc, so I could close it off later, but so far it's not switching to a full siphon.

 

[40sixN2]

I tried to rough this out in paint to make it easier for discussions sake.

As you can see in the top half it looks similar to the photo you've provided. The issues have been addressed by others but basically it has a few problems (or sub-optimal choices at least) and they've been pointed out but I'm including them here for posterity. For starters, the emergency drain needs to be higher obviously, and that's to make it so it only functions in the event of an emergency. Secondly, as @Shores805 pointed out the main and secondary drains should be higher. Basically your photo looks like there is a 3+ inch drop from where the weir notches begin and your main drain is. Depending on the flow of your tank, this could potentially cause issues by A) being much louder due to the aquarium sending water crashing down to the overflow, and B) increased flow/crashing will likely cause bubbles in the overflow section which will cause your siphon to run sub-optimally and potentially noisily.

The bottom half of the photo above basically shows a better layout for your drain pipes. The main/full siphon drain pipe should be lower than the secondary to make life easier in my experience. However, the water level will naturally be somewhere between the main and the secondary height due to the gate valve adjustments to get that fine tune between the two lines. Ideally, you want this water level to be just slightly under the weir so that when water is pushed into the overflow it will effectively be silent. Imagine holding a cup in your sink and tilting it to pour water out versus holding that same cup above your head and slowly pouring it.

This will significantly quiet the overflow. The emergency pipe should be raise to be just slightly above the weir height (or water level in the aquarium when enough flow is pushing water back into the overflow). This is to make it so that your emergency line is/can only activate when the water in the overflow has risen enough to the point that it is at equilibrium with the water in the display tank. By doing so you will still have the ability to prevent flooding but it will also prevent the occasional sucking/slurping you might hear if you have wave makers in the display that push water into the overflow at varying speeds/amounts.

On that note, I'd get rid of the basket/prefilter whatever you have on the emergency drain. It's needlessly redundant and you want that flow as unobstructed as possible. If you're worried about three different levels of failure due to a snail or something I think an overflow lid would be a better deterrent.

Man the picture answered a lot of questions I had on the same subject. Wasn't sure how far under the water line each one should be for an internal overflow versus external. Most of the illustrations online are for external overflows. Thanks!