Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Consider you have 2 barrels, 1 reservoir, and 2 pumps. The emergency drainage will prevent an overflow if one of the pumps fail.

Consider the two designs in these pics:

How big in inner diameter must the pipe size be in design 1? The pipes in design 2?

Design 1: http://img13.imageshack.us/i/overflowpipedesign1.jpg/
Design 2: http://img39.imageshack.us/i/overflowpipedesign2.jpg/

The emergency drainage pipes are coloured red and blue which connects the two barrels.

Design 1 only has one large pipe, close to parallel to the floor.
Design 2 has two smaller sized pipes, but are slanting for quicker water drainage.

Functionality: If pump B fails, then barrel 2 would eventually overflow. The drainage at the bottom of barrel will not be able to drain the incoming flow from the second barrel quick enough. My reservoir (sump) is 40% larger than it needs to be so if there is still an overflow, the flooding will not be as severe.

For added safety, I could design 3 more emergency drainage (siphon) pipe systems for both barrels and the reservoir and have it collect in a 3rd barrel; but this will take up more room. I need to worry about this as I'm doing indoor aquaponics.

If you wish to post images you can use the Img button under the subject line (provided the image is already hosted somewhere on the internet)
design 1

This way people can view them without having to click away

design 2

Unfortunately I don't know how to adjust the image size on the forum off the top of my head

testing...



Ok if I do [..... img ..... ] http://img39.imageshack.us/i/overflowpipedesign2.jpg/ [.../img....]

The text "image" replaces it...

Edit one last time...

Yeah I should used the attachment function

Need a bit more info here. What container is the fish tank?

If barrel 1 is fish tank, and barrel 2 is the grow bed and the reservoir is a sump tank, then you can do this with only one pump and remove the worry about one pump failing and causing overflows running the pump dry.

Yeah, Barrel 1 is the fish tank.

And now I have a dilemma. Arggh, gonna have to think about this one...

BTW, will it have a major impact on your idea if my drainage in my grow bed is not at the very bottom? Mine is draining out the side, making an L-shape, which makes the first two small drainage holes on the internal pipes roughly 3.5 inches above the bottom of the grow bed.

Oh yah, design 2 is soooo wrong. I just realized. If pump B (in the sump tank) fails, then I'd have roughly 8-9 gallons of water leaking into my floor. So to modify design 2, I need to making some kind of make-shift siphon to emergency drain the sump tank.

How deep is the grow bed? If it is a half barrel, don't worry about it as they are usually well over 12 inches deep.

Go with the one pump CHIFT PIST design and a timer on the one pump so that flood and drain happens so you don't have to worry about one pump failing and causing overflows inside. so long as the "sump" holds at least half the volume of the grow bed, it should work though I bet it would be easiest if the sump actually held 25 gallons, that way there would be extra volume so you don't have to worry about topping up as often.

The depth from the bottom of the barrel to the surface of the gravel will be 16 inches. The overflow pipe drain will be at roughly 13.5 inches.

Oh yes, I am going with the one pump set up.