Liquidator vs Peristaltic Chlorine pump

[randytsuch]

Today, I played with the DIY method again.

Fixed my air leak, and hooked it up to try it.
I filled my bucket about 1/2 full. It was at least a few gallons of water.

Started it up, made sure things looked OK, then left for a little while.
Came back to check in 30-40 minutes, and the bucket was empty.

I may put this on hold, since I'm thinking about getting a new pump anyway. and all this would change with the new pump.

Randy

 

[lovingHDTV]

It sounds like you have very high suction which could be part of the problem. So the only solution may be to use more buttons if possible and if you want to pursue this.

If you have a 10 gallon bucket and use 1 gallon of bleach per week plus reduce your run time to 8 hours, they the draw rate required would be 23 oz/hr which is pretty high so I still think you should be able to do this even with the high vacuum you are experiencing.

I don't know how high your vacuum is but if I assume 20" mg (-10 PSI) which is very high, then 9 buttons should be more than enough.

If can time the drain of the bucket, I might be able to get a better idea of what is going on. It could be the drip button style you are using are not appropriate for this application. Something I had not considered.

I know that I saw some buttons that are pressure adjusting, so they guarantee 1/2 gph over a large pressure range. I was thinking that if you had these buttons you would always get 1/2 gph because the reduced pressure drop over each consecutive button would not matter. Does that sound correct?

 

[mas985]

The buttons are rated for 1/2 gallon/hr under 15 PSI. If you reduce the pressure drop across the button, the flow rate will decrease. This is not much different than the way standard hydraulics work for pool plumbing. Flow rates are generally proportional to the equivalent length of pipe and the pressure drop across the pipe.

By putting several buttons in series, the pressure drop across each button drops and the total flow rate decreases. There is a fixed pressure change between the pump and air. In my case it is about 3PSI. By using 6 buttons, there is a 0.5 PSI drop accross each button. Scaling the flow:

1/2 GPH * (0.5 / 15) ^ (1/1.852) = 0.04 GPH = 5 oz/hr

The buttons I am using seem to scale with flow this way but I am not entirely sure that all buttons behave this way. Depending on the design, some may have higher flow rates at lower PSI drops which may be the problem that randytsuch is having. Even if his pressure change was ten times higher than mine, he should have flow rates that are no more than 3.5x mine or no more than 18 oz/hr.

I would be curious as to the brand of drip button Randytsuch is using.

 

[randytsuch]

I threw the bag away, but I bought them from OSH. I'll stop by in the next couple days, and see what brand it was.

I bought the ones that are not pressure adjusting, because I was worried about what lovingHDTV described in his post.

I know that HomeDepot sells Dig brand buttons, I may give those a shot next.

I have 9 1/2gal buttons in a sting. with a flow rate in gals/hr, so something doesn't jive.

Randy