Since I dont have an AP system at the moment, I really treated this as my baby. There is more to come when we reconfigure the pond filter which Ive mentioned in the previous post. As the water flowed from the pump which is seated after the filter, we could observe sediment piling into the gutters. This showed that the pond filter is inefficient when it comes to mechanical filtration, which is to remove the solids from the water. I have planned an improvement project, which will commence soon when time permits. After all, I cant afford to have those sediments piling up in the gutters!
Lets see some pictures shall we?
This is the overall layout of the system, the pond is right at the pillar on the right, the gutter beds on the background on the left. All in all, about 70ft of 25mm polypipe was used for the inlet, while about 50ft of 32mm polypipe was used for the outlet back into the pond. One thing I learned; the polypipe isnt the exact size the state it is, 25mm polypipe is smaller than 25mm PVC pipe, same goes for the 32mm polypipe which is actually about the same as 25mm polypipe. How does this affects the system? The outlet ends up being under designed!
Here are the gutter beds, holes being drilled. You can see the inlet manifold attached to gutter rows at the back. The inlets and the connectors of the gutters are 25mm PVC pipes.
My loyal assistant Syafiq at work. Hes quite a handyman himself and has no trouble picking up and executing the tasks I laid out. The gutter connectors can be seen on right.
Partial view of Haji Anwars pond. The tilapias in this pond are breeding. The largest ones are around 3kg!
Heres how the gutters are laid. Initially I just wanted to use a single piece of 20ft gutter but the earlier plan was to place the gutters at where we would need to bend them. This layout was a surprise to myself when Haji Anwar showed me the final placement of the gutters. I knew at that time, making a return which works by gravity at the length of 50ft is gonna be troublesome...
Heres another view at the beds. Theyre about 7ft a piece.
This is where the inlet to the beds is connected. The pump which powers the fountain of the pond is bypassed at a very low flowrate. This makes the system a continuous flow since the pump runs 24/7 and configuring a siphon with a 50ft tailpipe is very difficult I didnt even want to attempt running a siphon at that length...
After 70ft of 25mm polypipe, the inlet goes in here. A valve is crucial to control the flow though there is already a valve at the bypass at the pump. It just makes it more convenient to have it closer to the beds so you can immediately see the changes you make. You can never have too many valves...
This U-pipes are the connectors of the beds. It has a tee at the bottom with a stopper nut. Just in case the sediments plug up the pipe and there is need to drain it...
This is the swiveling loop siphon but in this application, it acts as an adjustable standpipe. When you swivel the loop, you can make changes in the water height in the beds...As you can see there is a reducer there however not by choice. The 32mm PVC pipe is indeed larger than the 32mm polypipe and connecting it requires that the 32mm PVC reduced to 25mm size. This is where the problem starts, a gravity dependent overflow must never be undersized. Ideally, I think the pipe should have been 32mm all the way but polypipe has the advantage of being flexible. Since all the stuff were there, we decided to just go ahead and make changes if problems arise.
After about 50ft of 32mm polypipe, the water from the beds return to the pond as shown...
So we open the flow and let it run. The water starts to flow to the beds at a very small rate (I need to verify this flowrate later). However, at first I was really anxious about the return pipe since after 10 mins of the beds started to overflow I still didnt get any returns to the pond! However then we start seeing the return flowing...but soon, it started siphoning!!! As shown in the picture below, the worst scenario occurred. I was being optimistic that maybe the siphon would break. However, my experience was right, it never broke no matter how many time I restarted the cycle and made adjustments, the siphon kept going with the smallest flowrate I could manage...it just wouldnt break...The problem is obvious, the tailpipe was too long that no air bubble which is needed to break the siphon could be generated given the length of the return pipe...This truly calls for a drastic solution...
Haji Anwar came with the brightest of ideas when he suggested that we empty the beds into a tank, connect the return pipe to the tank, and the tank itself will drain to the pond by gravity. By doing that, we could eliminate the neverending suction generated by the long tail pipe. I quickly assembled the what would be called a holding tank from a dustbin and put it to the test. I also got rid of the reducer at the loop siphon. Sure enough, we got lucky!
While I fill in the dustbin with water from the pipe to check if its functioning, I notice once its reached a level, a siphon was established! This is due to the base of the dustbin, being lower than the highest point that exists along the return pipe to the pond due to some incline in the layout...I just had a hunch that this the tank setup will turn into an autosiphon itself when I saw that the siphon actually breaks!!! I told Haji Anwar, well never get luckier than this. I was worried that the smaller-than-I-wanted 32mm polypipe was insufficient to act as the return pipe. Now that the new holding tank setup is working as an autosiphon, a huge rock was lifted off my shoulders!
This is the holding tank setup. As the base of the tank is actually lower than the highest elevation of the return pipe. An autosiphon was created. Once the water in the bin reaches about 2/3 of the height, it starts siphoning. Problem solved, in style!
As you can observe from the photo above, the flowrate to the gutter is very minimal. The styrofoam and the pots in place, all left for Haji Anwar to do is lay some shade nets and start germinating the seeds...
Ill post more on this as we progress! Thanks for reading!
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