• Background on Ben

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Have you ever made a hole in your acrylic sump only to change your mind about a configuration...but become stuck with that hole? Have you ever purchased (or wanted to purchase) a used sump but it has holes drilled into it in places you don't want?

It's an easy fix and I have two different methods for you. One is permanent and another that you could change your mind on later down the road and use the hole once again.

To fix it permanently, measure the diameter of this hole. Now go on to www.usplastics.com and search for acrylic shapes. They sell pre-cut acrylic shapes of many different thicknesses and diameters. It would make most sense to go with a circle but you do you.

They have acrylic adhesives on there as well but I like to go with Craftics #33 that I get from Avast Marineworks. Google them up if you don't know of them. It's thick and welds up quickly.

Clean around the hole with rubbing alcohol, clean your acrylic shape's surface with alcohol, apply the Craftics around the perimeter of your acrylic shape (apply inside the perimeter by a scosh to allow for it to spread out and not make a mess outside of the shape), press it over the hole and use a light duty cleaning magnet to hold it in place for about 15 minutes. That's it. Done.

You could do this on the inside or the outside of the sump but generally i'm doing this on the outside.

Don't forget that acrylic solvent is not a glue. It melts and welds the two pieces together. This is the same with "PVC glue". Again, not actually a glue but a solvent. It's melting them together.

So I posted this fix up on Facebook and a buddy of mine, Matt Wandell, had another idea.

What if you thought you didn't want a hole, covered it up, but then changed your mind yet again and wanted to utilize the hole?

First of all, make up your damn mind already.

Matt told me about a type of silicone glue from Dow called 795. Apparently it is super sticky and he has used it to glue shapes onto holes in order to plug them. This gives you a backdoor because, since it is a glue, you can come back later and remove the shape covering the hole. He says it will cure underwater but I have no experience with that so please be careful if used on an existing system. Don't say I didn't warn you. In this instance I would still clean the surfaces with rubbing alcohol and use a light duty magnet to hold them in place while it cures. You could go with the inside in this situation. This type of seal is not as durable as welding them together but there is no pressure in this application so there is no valid reason why you would fear it falling off.

So there you go. Plug your holes, bruh....or bruhette.
 

trinimaddness

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Mohegan lake
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I use to run my pump external but later decided to run it internal. What I did instead of acrylic weld is us a threaded bulkhead with a short piece of pvc that's capped on the end. That was if I wanted to re use that hole it wouldn't be an issue
 

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