| Hi Mickey,
thank you for the detailed comments. I see why you think it's undersize vortex now. if you look at the drawing closely, there are two ball valves before the water enter the Artisian pump. the ball valve attached to the vortex is designed to limit the amount of water the pump can draw from the settling tank. the second ball valve is design to control the water enter the pump from the skimmer.
I agreed that the trick is not having the water blast thru the settling tank but it's equally important not to have the water run thru the settling tank too slow. too slow flow rate in setting tank will cause the solids to settle in the bottom drain pipes. imo, this design offers the flexibility to adjust a flow rate thru the settling tank at optimal level so that solids settles in the tank and not in the bottom drain pipe.
I currently have similar setup in my first pond and it's working great. the main different in this new pond is that I am planning to use Ultima 6000. in my first pond, I use japanese mat in pre-filter btwn the pump and vortex. it's too much manual labor on clean up the pre-filter in my current pond. I hope modified the design with Ultima 6000 helps eliminate some of the manual labor when cleaning.
imo, only the water that carries the solid waste should flow thru the settling tank so it's not really need to have an oversize vortex or too big vortex. in fact, to help the water circulate more effectively, intake pump should take at a few openings such as skimmer and mid-level pond.
one improvement I think appropriate would be having the pre-filter setup at the skimmer such as savio skimmerfilter but I think it's an overkilled product too. my current pond doesn't have any pre-filter in the skimmer and it works out well too.
thanks for the feedbacks again,
Steve |