Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,

I was down at the B today trying to plan the plumbing for my system, and the mix of fittings was just frying my brain.

I've seen that a lot of members use those white and red pvc ball valves going into their GBs to regulate the flow rate to different GBs from the fishtank. On the other hand, many people also use DWV or stormwater for gravity driven portions of their system. From what I could see at the B and on the web, those ball valves are only available in presure pipe and not DWV.

I know arbe used uniseals through the side of his stormwater pipe to plumb in ball valves, but I was wondering if anyone else has a sure fire way/instructions for plumbing these valves into DWV or stormwater pipes. OR does everyone else just use pressure pipe. OR am i just a doofus and the valves actually are available in DWV?

Cheers,
Luke

p.s. I found a niffty technique on koi forums for plumbing DWV to pressure. But it seems like a fiddly hack. http://koi2day.com/forum/index.php?topic=4659.0

We moved away from DWV a few years ago due to the fact it was being used in a food system and stom water pipe was questionable. The ball valves fit well with 25mm irrigation pipe.

Thanks Faye,

Your comment was the final thing in convincing me to go pressure pipe all the way through the system. I was looking at the price difference between the pressure pipes and stormwater and figured it wasn't a great expense for the amount of pipping in my system, for that added piece of mind anyway (considering its to feed my family).

Using 90mm storm on my ssystem will probably be overkill anyway. As long as I use something bigger than the 40mm inflow for my SLO I should be okay.

how do you find the uv resistance of pressure pipe? should I paint?

I wouldn't bother painting it, my system isn't showing any signs of deteriorating even after 4 years and I have a couple of pvc pipe and taps in the dirt garden that we installed about 9 years ago still standing up to the elements.