Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Am in the process of converting my DWC system to flood and drain and have all the info I need on how to construct good working bell siphons. However I cant help noticing that my local plumbing stockist has a range of various height bell siphons, originally intended for use in autoflushing urinal tanks. These have been commercially designed and in use for years. Is set me wondering why we dont use these, rather than faffing about making our own? They are certainly competitively priced, when you look at the time and materials needed to make 4 siphons. All you would need to do is make a media guard to protect them once installed. Has anyone any thoughts or even experience about the pros and cons of using these? (apart form the joy and satisfaction of DIY construction!) Or are we just re-inventing the wheel so far as siphons are concerned when we make our own?

Siphon consrtuction is rather easy. I have never seen the urinal siphons you speak of.

Never, ever seen them for sale and I have spent a lot of time in plumbing suppliers.

As Ron said making siphons is easy.

I have never seen them either but I would think that they would all be a standard height.

I like option of being able to vary my standpipe heights between summer and winter or when there's a large root build up in the growbeds raising the media level etc.

No they are not all standard height. The ones I have seen range from between 5 and 8 inches so could be used on a variety of frowned depths. The main limitation I can see is that they all generally have a 1inch diameter output. This could be too small for larger grow beds?

We wouldn't have those available in Australia I wouldn't think.... We have waterless urinals that never flush rather than ones that flush all the time automatically..

Do you have a link or a picture?

Here is a link

as you can see these ones come in three sizes. The pic shws the siphon inverted but obviously would be fitted the other way up!

http://www.toolstation.com/shop/p64794? ... tAodsA0AxQ

..
I would be pretty certain they would be manufactured BY the urinal manufacturer, and in any case, you can guarantee that their cost would be prohibitive..

Try searching ALIBABA for urinal siphon or similar... IF they can be bought then that is where you might find them..

FWIIW--- just checked ALIBABA and AliExpress and there is no such device available.. but then you may find that it is called something most obscure..
..
.

I've never much used bell siphons because I've focussed on larger beds which need larger pipes which makes bell siphons less appropriate. Rather mine are bent pipes but both are pretty easy to make and get working with a bit of fiddling.

The commercial ones would still need the fiddling so I don't see the advantage.

Compared to the cost of buying all the relevant pipe sizes, end caps, snorkel tube etc I didn't think the price was too bad at about £12 each (not everyone has lots of pipe off cuts kicking around unfortunately ) Also, being a commercial product they are pretty well guaranteed to function well. Not everyone's siphon does, judging from the forum posts. Was just interested to hear if anyone had tried them. I think by nature U.S. aquaponicnauts love pottering and making our own kit but do sometimes think we are in danger of trying to plough our own furrow and this can occasionally lead us into reinventing the wheel, when a ready solution might already exist??

Not so. Since a large part of getting siphons to work is the down stream plumbing buying a preformed siphon won't help much.

True, but solving back pressure problems with bought siphon cant be much more difficult than with a home built one. Both a challenge !

Yep

The ones i have seen use a rubber seal and needs to be mechanically "initiated". I think that the seal will be prone to fouling and am not sure how you will create a repeat cycle with them?