How to improve siphon operation

[Moe]

Hello,

I have two growbeds.  I built two siphons for them.  I am using one pumb in a sumb tank with a splitter. I have a valve for each bed to control the water going in the bed.    So far so good.  Every once in a while, one of them would "hang". either at the start time or end time of the siphon cycle.  I know that if I do have too little of a flow, the siphon will never start and if I have too much of a flow, the siphon will never stop.

My question is what other tricks I can do to improve the situation when it hangs.  At one point, it seems that I can not get the water flow just right.  I have a 2" bell on top of the 3/4 inch pipe.  The 2" bell has holes in the bottom to get the siphon going, Can anyone tell me what would happen if I put too more holes, would that help the start of the siphon or the end of the siphon to take place?

Thanks

 

[John McCaw]

Moe;

    If you can, as it worked for me, is to INCREASE the input side of the siphon, and DECREASE the output side to CREATE some velocity. Here what I did: On the top of your 3/4 inch, add a 1 inch to 3/4 inch reducing sleeve. This will INCREASE the flow INTO the output side. At the OUTPUT side, AFTER passing thru the bottom of the bed, add a 3/4 to 1/2 reducing sleeve, with a small piece of 1/2 inch pipe. What this dose is create some back pressure to start the siphon, and because the volume coming in is "pushed" thru a smaller hole going out, it increases in speed, "pulling" more water with it. If your bell has enough holes/slits cut in it, and they are high enough (1 1/2 to 2" from the bottom) , and with the the water draining faster than it is coming in, it should "break" siphon. If it gurgles a couple of times, as if it want to keep running, that is OK, it just needs to "gulp" enough air to stop. 

   Hope that helps.

[Harold Sukhbir]

Hi Moe,

Have a much holes as you can all around the bottom of the bell. Leave between a 1 inch to 1-1/2 inch gap between the top of the stand pipe and the top of the bell. Reduce the stand pipe exit with a 1/2 inch reducer. Try the first two fixes and see if the third one becomes necessary.

[Kaydi Homme]

Do a YouTube search for the better bell siphon.

[Moe]

John McCaw,

Thanks a million.  This is exactly what I was looking for.  it is running perfect and consistently. :)

May be you can share your tricks for how to recycle the system.  I sure can use some help in that area.  it has been a long time since I started the fishless cycle. I have lettuce and yesterday I added Kale.  They seem to be doing fine.  However, the Nitrate and Nitrite all a solid zero.  I have a thread under system cycle, call "numbers do not make sense" if you like to reply there.

Again, thanks