Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I went out last week to buy all the bits to make an Affnan Bell siphon as per the information I downloaded from Affnans web site. Only to find I have to wait 2 weeks for my plumbing shop to order in the 25mm to 50mm PVC adaptors.

So I went to Bunnings and all they had was 25mm to 40mm, so I bought one to see how that would work. I was going to by the 80mm PVC and dome tops as well from the plumbing supplies but since they didn't have the other bits I left it for later, as I have a heaps of other PVC pipes at home to work with.

When I arrived home I realised I didn't have any caps for the PVC pipes I was about to head back to 'B' to buy an assortment of caps when I saw an empty 1.25l Fizzy drink bottle and thought that might work?

So on Sunday morning myself and a mate of mine staying over on the weekend went out and began some trials to see what happens when you change things. I remember when I made the 1st tub it all worked a treat until we added the scoria and then it took another 2 weeks to get it running right.

So 1st up we turned a 9l bucket into a GB.



The we cut the bottom off the fizzy drink bottle and with some scissors took triangle wedges out of the bottom to let the water in. I was originally going to take the top off but when I looked at it I though that would make it too short?

Then we made a temporary stand beside the fish pond/fish tank to sit the unit. I have a spare line on the pump to help move the water around the pond which was handy for this experiment.

Before we ran on it in the pond wit did a couple of test runs in the work shop with a watering can and it ran 1st time, it was just hard to keep the water flow constant from the watering can.

So then we moved it out to the FT and placed the water line into the bucket and it worked 1st time!

I have video to show of it working, just waiting for you tube to let me get access then I will add a link for it.

I have more photos and more info to go. But need to go and do some work.

Cool, what does it look like when it starts to siphon?

Does the funnel create a vortex which slowly sucks all the air out of the top of the bell like I have been picturing in my head or is something different going on?

Affnans rock

I have just up-loaded a couple of videos to my site.
http://web.me.com/decal/Bretts_BYAP_System/Movie.html

I am still playing with youtube and once I have that worked out I will post the link for them too.

Now where was I before I was interrupted by work?

We ran the 1st test for a good hour with out medium with no issues at all. So next was to add the PVC guard and some medium, we were using expanded clay pebbles.

I put minimal slits in the guard to see how it would go with the clay pebbles. Not to good as it turned out. The siphon was cutting out with half the water still in the bucket because the siphon was pulling out more water then could get through.


Also we had to up the water flow to get the siphon to begin. With out the medium we only needed 1.8l/min. With the medium that went up to 3.0l/min.

I didn't take as many photos as I thought I did.

Might set up again next weekend and take some photos and video of how it looked?

After working out we didn't have enough slots it was back into the workshop and we added some more.


This time it worked much better.

We had worked out in the tests with out medium that we ended up with 3.5cm of water in the bottom of the bucket and with medium we had 4.5cm of water left.

We though this may have been due to the water not being able to get through the PVC guard?

Our next idea was to try different guards, I had some small square wire in the yard so we wrapped the bottle with it a couple of times.



Unfortunately the wholes were too big and it allowed a lot of the clay balls to get through and there wasn't any space to see how much water was left in the bottom of the bucket. After another search of the yard I found some even small square wire. This time we made the ring larger so we could measure the depth of water left.


It came back down to 3.5cm the same as not having medium in the bucket.

Knowing that galvanised wire does not go well with AP, it was back to the PVC pipe and decided to take great chunks out of the it and then wrap it in Fly wire.



This helped to bring the water level lower.

Then over a cup of tea and some fruit cake (damn I make a bake fruit cake ) we decided that the difference between 3.5cm and 4.5cm left on the bottom of a 30cm grow bed was not a lot really and as long as you have plenty of holes or slots you shouldn't have a lot of issues?

I measure the flow in my original GB's with eh normal bell siphon and they were needing 4.8l/min to start to flow.

Here's a couple of photos of the bottle I took today as I forgot yesterday.



After playing around with the bottle in the bucket I decide to try it in one of the GB's to see how it would go.
I took out the old bell and dropped the bottle in and away it went. The only issue we had was trying to get it to stop.
With the old bell siphon I need to raise the out let pipe slightly to get it to start, so I took the wire off holding it up and re-leveled the pipe.

It helped both the staring and the stopping, it now pretty much stops as soon as the air comes up from the bottom.

I will take a video of that soon and put that up on the web site.

Finally worked out how to get my video up onto you Tube.

So here it is working with a 1.25lt fizzy drink bottle.

It's great to see whats happening inside.

Nice video.

Thanks, I will try to put some more up of it working on the GB now that I have worked out how to to do it.

Nice one Decal

Thats the first vid i have seen of a working siphon. Well done

Mark

It makes it so much easier to work out why it's not working when you can see inside.

My next plan is to try a 2l fizzy drink bottle when I get the 25mm to 50mm adaptors.

Have just posted a new You Tube video on how I made the Siphon from a plastic bottle. This time I uesed a clear bottle and it's much easier to see inside.



The green bottle I made last week has ben running like a dream. I have now changed it over to the clear bottle and will do a video of it working in the GB later in the week.

Here's just a short clip of the water in-side.

Nice one Mr bell.