What size hole is in the top of your Durso

[electric130]

I made a durso standpipe for my 90 AGA. i followed the instructions on durso's website. it says that if the water keeps dropping below the intake of the elbow, the hole is too small and make it bigger. well on his site, he says start with 1/16" and move upto 5/64" if needed. well, my water keeps dropping too low so i kept making the hole bigger. i'm upto 1/8" now, and it's still dropping on me.

i just wondered what size you had to use to get your's stable, and what's your flow rate through it?

 

[reefNewbie]

mines 1/4in but i have another tube blocking the whole in such away so that maybe only half of the whole is actually open.

 

[ReefStar]

I just dealt with the same issue today. I spent half a day playing around with the standpipe and then finally drilled a hole about 1/4" and the problem fixed itself. I would suggest just keep using a larger bit until the water level raises.

Hope this helps!

 

[electric130]

okay, so i guess i'll keep making the hole bigger.

 

[Tremelle]

On Durso's site he also had a page with a good idea a user of the stand pipe had. The hole was drilled on the side of the end cap and pipe. You can drill the largest hole the side of the cap will allow. Then all you have to do is rotate the cap over the hole to close it up to the desired size.

Here is the link:

http://www.rl180reef.com/pages/standpip ... irhole.htm

 

[electric130]

yeah i saw that, but didn't want to fiddle with it since it says that a very small movement can cause a large change in the system. i may try it though.

 

[teeljay]

The air hole in my durso stand pipe is 1/8", works really great...about once every 2 months I poke a toothpick through the hole to make sure it is not being blocked by salt or anyother gunk.

 

[skipm]

I made mine 3/16" with the intention of adding an air flow control vale to fine tune the air flow but ended up having to remove the valve because it was too restrictive. After removing the air flow valve, the 3/16" hole works perfect in my system.

 

[reefland]

Web site already says what size hole I use in my standpipe. :wink:

The hole size is relative to your flow rate. The less flow you have the larger the air hole you need. I'm sure number of overflows and teeth spacing play an important role as well.

For a while (many months ago) I tried using a Iwaki MD70RLT and MAK4 as return pumps (for about 2,500 GPH @ 4ft). And the two 1 inch bulkheads processed the flow (had to widen the overflow teeth to let that volume into the chambers). The standpipes needed a hole so tiny even a toothpick was to fat to clean the hole. I eventually moved the MAK4 to a closed loop instead (to risky pushing overflows that far).

 

[electric130]

wow, that helps a lot. so the hole size is inversely proportional to the flow rate. i was thinking it was directly proportional. i'm probably pushing about 700GPH through mine. i guess i'll keep making it bigger. i didn't glue my cap on yet so i can get a new one if i mess up too much.

 

[reefland]

i didn't glue my cap on yet so i can get a new one if i mess up too much.

I would suggest you never glue on the end-cap and never glue on the tee. Makes for easier access if something should ever get into the pipe.

Just use a few wraps of teflon tape to make a good seal.

 

[electric130]

thanks for the info. i can't believe i'm getting help straight from "The Durso Man." I'm new to this board, but have been on reefcentral for about a year now (same user name over there). these boards are the best thing that has ever happened to this hobby (metal halide would probably be second IMO) i just wish i knew about these boards when i first got into the hobby. it probably would have saved me the $400 in fish i lost in the first 6 months. "If I only knew then what I know now." how many of us have ever said that?

thanks again Rich, love your site BTW. Did you program it all, or did you use software?

 

[reefland]

thanks again Rich, love your site BTW. Did you program it all, or did you use software?

Welcome... the majority of the site was written in NotePad. I now use HomeSite which is a nice fancy NotePad. Does sytax coloring and tag checking, spell checking. I won't use any products that do code generation or mess up the formatting of my existing code.

 

[handyman]

electric130
did you ever solve your problem?
my thought is not enough water going into the box

 

[electric130]

electric130
did you ever solve your problem?
my thought is not enough water going into the box

i never messed with the hole enough to get it perfected. i just took the cap off the top of the pipe and have it sitting kind of cocked to one side so there's a slight gap to let air in. water level is higher on the pipe than Rich recommends, but it works and the cap blocks out almost all of the sound. it's quiet enough, almost silent. it's not noticable. if the gap starts getting blocked with salt or dirt, it's easy to pop off and wipe it off.