Herbie question

[Abpanda]

Hi everyone. Can I ask one of you to have a look at my herbie drains? The lower standpipe is about 5" below the emergency, which is even with the overflow top. Is this low enough, to low, or to high?

See pic. Thanks.

 

[hijinks7]

Yes that is fine the lower you go the more water will drain into the sump on a power outage. I put mine 6 inches below.

 

[theMeat]

There doesn’t need to be that much dif between drain and emergency. If you move the drain up it’ll be quieter since the water won’t fall down into overflow box as far.
And there only needs to be about an inch between.
Would say the emergency height at overflow weir openings, and drain an inch below is perfect

 

[hijinks7]

correctly working system the water stays just below the emergency. His specs call for 6 inches below the emergency.

 

[Abpanda]

The Gmac article is what I referenced when doing this, so its good to hear some different opinions. I'll make the main stand pipe longer to reduce the distance between the two.

What about adjusting to have a "trickle" of water flowing down the emergency? Is this necessary?

 

[hijinks7]

You don't want the main one close to the surface. If its too close it creates a whirlpool and you'll get a sucking noise or sucking noise. Worse case the full siphon breaks and you go over your emergency and then it'll be real loud.

Your emergency should be like 1/2-1 inch below the grates on the overflow. The idea for the trickle is it surface skims into the emergency but not enough for noticeable noise.

 

[Even Further]

There doesn’t need to be that much dif between drain and emergency. If you move the drain up it’ll be quieter since the water won’t fall down into overflow box as far.
And there only needs to be about an inch between.
Would say the emergency height at overflow weir openings, and drain an inch below is perfect

No that's not the way to do it if you're running a Herbie. Moving the drain too close to the water level will gurgle and disrupt the siphon. The emergency inlet is what sets the normal level in the overflow box. The primary drain is a tuned siphon and should be lower to make it easier to tune, and keep silent.

 

[Abpanda]

Excellent feedback guys. Thank you. I'll play around with it to get it right.

 

[Abpanda]

Duplicate post

 

[TangingOut]

Lower your emergency by 1/2". Your current setup won't allow for a trickle down the emergency and you'll have surface scum in the overflow. That's the only thing I'd change.

 

[Abpanda]

Lower your emergency by 1/2". Your current setup won't allow for a trickle down the emergency and you'll have surface scum in the overflow. That's the only thing I'd change.

Ok. So lower my emergency 1/2" lower than the top of the overflow and then have my main several inches below that?

 

[Even Further]

You'll want it approximately 1/2" lower than the bottom of the overflow weir, just like the Gmac picture. The siphon/primary drain should be about 6" below that. If the water falls more than 1" inside the overflow box, it will create noise. The further the water flows and drops inside the overflow box, the louder the noise. Herbie drain can be tuned to be very quite/silent.

Testing out and tuning the siphon should include simulating a power outage and restart.

 

[Abpanda]

Got it up and running today. Thanks for all the feedback!

Will keep it in the garage for the next week or so, to be sure there are no leaks. I found and fixed the few I located so far.

Simulated a power outage and nothing overflowed.

Have to figure out whats next! I'm thinking of leading with a FOWLR build. This is my first saltwater tank.

 

[Abpanda]

A few pics