Bell Siphone problem

[Al Hodges]

Bell Siphon – Stand pipe top needs to be level. A ton of water and media can distort wooden, metal, and plastic grow beds with Bell Siphon looking like the Tower of Pizza. Ooops. Put proper support under grpw bed and support with auto jack for fine tuning.

Murray Hallam is ripping out his large commercial PVC tube system in Australia due to temperature problems with water overheating in pipes. He is converting several large greehouses to grow beds, an expensive change. Congratulation to Murray for admitting a mistake publically. It is a rare, good person to take responsibility in this 21st Century..

Al 

 

[Al Hodges]

I believe it was the University of Hawaii that coined the phrase "double:double:double" as a rule of thumb for diameter of the three PVC pipes. If stand pipe is 1.5 inches, Bell Siphon is three inches and media and fish guard six inches.

Al

[Robert J]

I stablized mine with a 4" flat drain cap and 4" sch 40 pvc root guard to keep the load away from the bell...  I'm almost wishing I would have gone with 6" (fat hands) instead--but so far so good.  Only problem I've had is excessive roots getting into the free zone and ultimately clogging the bell.  It only happened once but cost me 440 gallons of water.  Good news is the redundant backups kept my fish tanks full.

[NARDC.in]

He he... bell siphon and the tower of pizza.  I enjoyed that analogy Al :)

[Alex Veidel]

Oh, and not that this really matters, 'cause I understood what you were referencing, but it's "The Tower of Pisa".

[Alex Veidel]

You know that's right ;)

[Al Hodges]

Alex Veidel

Are you the only reader with a (maybe poor) sense of humor?

[Alex Veidel]

Yeah, a tower of pizza would be pretty dysfunctional :)

[Mark Hall]

Murray is cool. I think he has nailed it by "trying to keep it simple".