Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey

I am using a 3000 litre per hour pump for my system, and was wondering that should I use 20mm or 25mm pipe connect with my pump? It will lift water about 1 metre to my swirl filter.

Also what pipe do u use? Where to buy?

The bigger the better (and less bends the better), up to the size of the outlet on the pump, i used 25mm flexible off the pump to 25mm PVC using quick release couplers.
Any plumbing supplies, even Bunnings but they expensive.

thanks, i am thinking the same way, will go for 25mm. yes plumbing at bunnings is expensive, i compare with masters, masters seem have a better deal, for example, for a 20mm pvc female bit, sell for $3.7 at bunnings, but only $1.3 at masters, such a big difference.

Not a Masters fan but might have to reconsider for odd bits of plumbing on weekends.

also, beside bulkhead, what can i use to do a silmiar job, as bulkhead is too dear.

Uni seals, not sure where to get small quantities though

There is no reason to not go bigger than the out let pipe. Well apart from expense of pipe and fittings that is.

I install pumps so that the delivery pipe has a water velocity of less than 1m/s that way you loseonly a small amount of flow to friction losses.

I get my uni seals from here:
http://www.abstractplastics.com.au/cata ... ng/uniseal

Good price, and quick delivery. But their ordering system is a little wonky.

uniseal sounds great, i saw this on youtube video, not sure how to use it, and will buy some when the next project is due.

thank for all tips, i will use 25mm for my pump outlet, and pump the water from pond to my swirl filter, usiing a pump 3000 litre per hour to pump 1 metre in height, and then plan to have 40mm pipe for my swirl filter output, then output to my three growing beds by gravity, on each growing bed, will have a 40mm pvc tee, then convert the pipe from 40mm to 15mm with a value attached, how does this plumbing work sound?

I found that I could screw on a 40mm pvc connector and then use 40mm pipe from my pump.



Uniseals are awesome. One trick I learned from another member of this forum is to attach a T piece to the pipe you are pushing through. This makes it easier, specially on the larger (90mm) pipes.

wow, you connect a 40mm pvc connector, are you using a super big pump?

can anyone suggest a good source to buy 25mm hose, i saw the ones that selling in bunnings and masters, not so good.

Local plumbing supply is the best option, mate i wouldn't be using 15mm. The smallest pipe you need is 25mm IMO.
The plumbing store will sell ribbed flexible hose, real HD which you can add a quick release fitting to, (if you can find them) or a cam lock fitting ( what i used).

For some, maybe most, pumps there is a definite advantage in going large with the plumbing.

The pump I'm using, which delivers ~5500l/hr into my GBs at a bit over 1m head, has a 32mm outlet. I split that into 2 X 32mm Rural poly at the pump, also joined at the far end to make a ring. This gives me just under 1m/s water velocity in the main distribution pipes, and each GB has its own 25mm riser, which have even slower velocities.

The friction head loss works out to be the equivalent of an extra ~0.7m head (ignoring friction from a few 90deg bends), which is a reasonably significant loss for the pumps typically used in AP, which are not positive displacement and will only pump to low heads.

However, if I'd just gone with a single 32mm pipe to deliver to all 9GBs, then the friction head loss would be the equivalent of over 2.5m extra head, at that flow rate, which the pump obviously can't deliver, so I'd have a significantly reduced pumped volume.

If you increased the pipe to 50mm you would see that friction loss drop a lot more. At my local hardware the price difference between 32mm and 50mm fittings is pretty small.

With my system I went from 32mm to 100mm. I could have used smaller but the again the price difference between the two was stuff all and I wanted as much flow as possible.