…or…do you know what happens when the hose clamp on a 2000 gallons per hour marine tank pump rusts and snaps?
A basement full of salt water.
Fortunately only a thin layer, because there are failsafe bulkheads that prevent a) the tank from draining below the top drainholes, about 10 gallons; and b) a bulkhead that prevents the sump from draining more than 15 gallons. And the bulkhead connector to the Iwaki pump, that is set 3″ from the bottom of the last of five chambers of the sump?
Jane, from the living room: “The pump’s quit.”
Me: “Which pump?” We have: the front fountain pump, the back pond pump, the pump for the uv filter, plus two more pumps in the marine system.
“Tank pump.”
Expletives. I head down and discover not a snail jamming the impeller on the Iwaki, but the main hose FROM the Iwaki waving in the air in time with its gasps for water.
And a quarter inch of water everywhere. Fortuitously (one cannot say fortunately) we already had the dehumidifier set up in the basement to handle last week’s flood (re the photographs and tapes)…so that was handled.
So…we grab buckets, we count out salt by the half cup (half cup a gallon makes seawater) into the known-quantity buckets, and thank goodness I already had conditioned (reverse osmosis) water sitting in a 32 gallon trashcan. I cut off the automatic topoff, which was piddling fresh water (non-salt) into the tank in the dim conviction we were low on water through evaporation.
And we start the salt water mixing: you are NOT supposed to put raw salt water into your tank: it’s supposed to sit and condition for 24 hours, as the many trace elements dissolve. Heck with that: marine fish and corals also need oxygen, and this system can’t run until I get that pump functioning properly, and the pump can’t pump without more water in the system.
So I set the mag 12 to stirring it. That’s a 1000 gph pump. It’s overkill, but it mixed it to thorough transparency in 30 minutes. Not recommended, but neither is not breathing. Marine systems require a LOT of oxygen, and air exchange at the surface won’t cut it.
So I mop, and mop. Jane gets the hose clamp replaced. We reconnect.
Is the worlds largest hammer coral in captivity annoyed? Not in the least. It senses nutrients and it’s sucking water like crazy. The fish are happy. We seem to have dodged the bullet. I have 4 more gallons of salt water to put in and have started the ro/di filter to produce more pure fresh water to use to mix salt.
Sheesh!
Every time I try to get a running start at this book, it’s Armageddon!
At least this one is relatively easily solved. I took a thorough bath in salt water, so I ran a washing.
All’s well so far.
Glad the fish, coral, plants, and other marine life are OK. It sounds like you both caught it very early. I hope there was not further damage to whatever’s in you ladies’ basement. “Ye gods and little fishes” seems like an appropriate epithet. It’s better than whatever other dockworker’s or sailor’s quotes might apply; more printable for a mixed audience, anyway, haha.
With all that marine life of various species swimming about, one wonders what sort of aliens are next likely to appear dockside in some novel, or colonizing (being colonized?) some planet. It’s that or some seafaring tale. Hmm…what Cherryh might do with such. How “starfish” might be a pun.
Odd thought: (Very odd indeed.) At least you did not see all that salt water in the basement and cry, “Brine! Fetch the cucumbers and cabbage! Pickling awaits!” Hahaha. It’s either that, or grab the toy sailboat, submarine, and newspaper captain’s hat.
I am unaware of anything strange having entered my bloodstream or olfactory nodes…. Possibly, it’s the effect of lack of sleep and two wacky-humored felines.
I did have catfish on Wednesday and am contemplating how to make homemade eggrolls / spring rolls. So perhaps…. Nah, couldn’t be.
re: homemade eggrolls — if you’re deep fat frying them, I suggest rolling them just before you put them in the oil. If you roll them all at one time, by the time you get to the last ones, the wrappers are soggy and then when you put them in the oil, you get massive hot oil spatters…
And I thought it was bad when 10 gallons of my 50 gallon fresh water tank ended up on the floor, last December! I had to put my fish into an old 25 gal tank and recalk the tank (three times). The 50 gal tank is alright now and the fish are twice as big.
I should have suggested this to you earlier when you showed me the arrangement in the basement. With all of that water, all of those hoses, and the potential for disaster, I’d recommend you get a shop vac and keep it in the basement. That way, if any water does spill, the vac will pick up more water faster than a mop.
I don’t recall if you have a drain system in the basement, but isn’t the laundry in the basement? If you can’t drain it directly, perhaps a bit at a time through the washing machine, rather than trying to lug a heavy canister of water up the steps to dump. Shop-Vac used to make the ones that had a hose fitting on the bottom and would pump the water out against up to I believe a moderate rise. 15 – 20 feet would be my guess, although why I keep thinking 50 feet doesn’t make sense.
Oh, ditto on the shop vac! Very handy.
Not a bad idea. We have a floor drain, but some of it persistently and perversely goes toward the finished-side carpet. I just sucked up a couple of cups of water via a Little Green Clean Machine.
Ah — that means you can use a Shop-Vac to suck up any water heading towards the danger zone, and simply run the drain hose straight into the floor drain!
I might consider making a shallow berm out of tile and waterproof grout (like a doorsill) between the finished area of your basement and the fishy area, which I presume is unfinished bare concrete. A 1/2″ to 1″ rise will hopefully keep water away from areas that don’t like it, long enough for it to either head for the drain or for you or Jane to discover the leak.
If you know how to pump past 32 feet with a single stage
we will rechristen you Archimedes II…GRIN
I told the aquarium water STAY in a loud voice, so far it
has worked, but one of the 12″ monsters jumped out onto
the floor. They tend to panic if you are passing by.
Rigging an alarm might help if you expect this to happen again.
I know they make commercial ones for swimming pools. The basic
idea is the water acts like a switch across two wires to turn on
the gadgetry.
I’ve got it about 15 or so on a 2000gph on a one-inch inner diameter with two 1/2 inch outlets in the tank. We fired it up first without a ball valve in the way and if I hadn’t cut back, I swear it would have exited the tank and hit the living room windows. Jane yelled stop and I cranked that ball valve down to 1/4. Talk about being oversold on pumps! The mag 12 could have handled it, but I got this whizbang Iwaki, indestructible, run for 10 years without a glitch (if a snail doesn’t get sucked into one of the intakes)…
The Shinamuri or whatever is that powers the pond is about the same size. 2000gph cycles our whole 12×20 pond in 2 hours. And this thing is powering a 54 gallon tank upstairs.
The return pipe is downright funny: all I could get was spa flex, which is paper thin, but would bend, unlike the fat hose from Hoses Are Us. Tough. But it bucks like crazy until we tied it down. And stretch—
First time it filled, it tried to hit the floor, from the ceiling exit, and I was working like a mad spider with macrame cord, tying it up here and here and here and anchoring it to whatever I could find—pipe, AC conduit, anything to keep it from swagging low with a load of water in it. 🙂
THe adventures of setting up a marine tank in a blazing hurry in mid-move.
My condolences to your pump, I’m guessing it is probably long out of warranty. Seems like you guys have the appliance curse lately, first the frig, now this.
Have you ever checked the power flow coming into the house? Older homes with bad, old, or improperly installed wiring, can cause excessive wear on appliances. I know this was just a case of a faulty hose, but it may save you a fire or short lifespans in the future. Urban areas with allot of brown outs have the same effect, unfortunately their isn’t much to be done there except move.
No, actually, the pump, though dry, came through fine; an Iwaki decouples its mag drive when stressed, so it doesn’t burn out, and if you hold the impeller in your hand, a) you don’t know how on earth they cast it, b) and it weighs several pounds. That thing doesn’t die easily. We’re an old house, but they’d redone the wiring to 1995 standards, and we’re real happy about that. Our fuse box is a work of art, done by an electrician who believed in precise right-angle bends and impeccable connections.
The fridge was the last major appliance of the freestanding sort that we had yet to replace—except the range, and we had new guts put in in, so I suppose it was due: I don’t know its vintage–but the new one is sooooooo much better.
Good to hear, sounds like you have it covered. I run into scary wiring problems on some houses I work on. One still had porcelain posts running through rock wool and vermiculite insulation. Had those Dr. Frankenstein double throw switches on the fuse box. Don’t think it had been rewired since the 20’s.
“Progress Intruder,” indeed! Could you possibly name the next volume, “Expediter”?
Excuse the OT, but Xenophon? Your avatar? A green-eyed person with stag antlers playing the bagpipe?
I call it Celtic Kokopelli. It combines my two major areas of archaeological study. It’s a representation of the Celtic Master of the Wild Hunt done in the style of the Native American Kokopelli
At the risk of repetition, Xenephon….WAAAAY COOOOL! 8) 8) 8)
WHEW! That sounds like it was a close one! Happy that it wasn’t any worse and that the fishies are ok. 😀
I put a trip switch on my (dug) well pump several years ago after I burnt the old one out due to having a stupid attack in which I left a hose running and ran the well dry. It was over 25 yrs. old and living on borrowed time but the trip on the new pump was *very* nice indeed when we had a draught a few years ago and running dry was common.
Just what size pump do I need for a 3 to 4000 gal. pond? The waterfall is not going to be a torrent more like a stream moving over rock. I am setting it up with a fountain pump when it stops raining. Right now I am filtering with a venturi pump and fiberfill as there won’t be any real fish until next year. Guess it’s time for another conversation with the pond guy.
One thing to be said for progressing slowly is that it’s easier to make adjustments and changes! 8)
What I use quite handily in our pond is a 1/2 hp Shinmaywa pump, and the model number is something like 50CR etc…the output of which uses what I think is actually a 2″ interior diameter hose. It’s just about as wide as a mattock blade, very conveniently, when we went to bury it between the skimmer (where the pump is) and the waterfall. Jane has pond pix, and you can see that our waterfall, about chest high, splashes a decent but not wild flow of water down the rocks. There are some very good pumps out there.
This is a link to a pic of a similar pump: we’re not Norus, but we are Shinmaywa. http://www.sparkling-koi-ponds.com/products/Shinmaywa-1%7B47%7D2-HP-Norus-Waterfall-Pump.html
It’s tough, durable, withstands mistakes (like letting the skimmer go dry: it shuts itself off)…and though pricey, will probably mean no emergency replacements, and a good protection for your investment of labor and attachment to your fish.
I got mine from pondliner.com. They have another good one, too, that they recommend as well as the Shinmaywa, but frankly, the Japanese have been doing ponds and water features a lot longer, and I tend to trust their equipment. They may have been blessed with a lot of natural streams, but not everyone who has a pond has such luck, so they’ve been at this for about as long as anyone, in the small quiet pump category. The noise of this pump is NOT annoyingly loud—which is another reason a moderate (but contained) splash in your waterfall is a Good Thing: it will mask any pump noise from the skimmer. You only hear the skimmer/pump when you’re standing right by it, and for some reason the fractal noise of the waterfall makes even the outside traffic noise ignorable. The human ear WANTS to hear fractals above all else, and we’re not the only ones who hold that theory: our guests remark on it too, that the waterfall just makes them ignore the traffic (we live on an arterial) and relax.
We did our waterfall by building a platform of cinderblock, rubble and such, installing the waterfall filter (the size of a regular trash can, and about that shape) and then building around it with more cinder block, then liner, then dirt, then plants and large rocks. We planned steps up one side so you can reach the top for service. And you want to ‘dish’ the set-in area of the waterfall so you can make wings on the side to help waterproof the splash-zone, so that any windblown water just hits rock and runs back down the hidden sheeting behind, right back to the pond. It’s a chance to do some real art, in arranging the water: you’ll be moving rocks to get just the right little stream to hit a rock and bounce right. My advice: do NOT use that waterfall foam stuff—it’s not black, it’s screaming purple, and it’s ugly. Stack your rocks carefully and they’ll stand all on their own. We did create a set of cinderblock ‘steps’ under the liner to give the heavy rocks of the waterfall a secure place to sit, and there is not an ounce of adhesive or filler anywhere in our waterfall: it’s all gravity.
To be honest, I only recall a few outside noises while I was in the back yard. Only because they were coming from very loud amplified stereo systems which also had the bass level exaggerated and probably had a separate power source for the amplifier(s), not to mention the speakers. Enough to shake the rust as well as the fenders off those cars.
You couldn’t tell we were on an arterial throughway unless you peeked over the fence and noticed the cars going by.
If you have access to a friend who lives in the country, you can see if they have any field stones they’d like to divest. Cheap, although you would have to be careful how you arrange them, since they aren’t like flagstones. I’m sure you could make some really nice arrangements with those, though. My nephew, who was in his early teens, did my brother’s waterfall. It had a little bit of backsplash, but I think they learned a lot from it and got it rearranged to eliminate the problem. I helped them dig the pond, it was 4-1/2 feet deep, maybe 12 feet long and 8 feet wide. As for me digging a pond here, yes, I could, and it might even be an ideal place, but I’m not the owner, and I hesitate to make any major changes to the land without permission. Yes, it’s easy to ask, but they have enough worries right now, so I’ll hold off until some other time.
Oh, indeed we have a couple of friends in the country—we’ve gotten loads of that black basalt from one, and a few round stones. Glaciers rearranged the real estate out here for half a million years, especially the last 50,000, and we have rock—oh, do we have rock!
I like the suggestion of a tiled sill, but that sounds like something to trip over when in a hurry or in the dark, to catch the unwary or sleepy, heheh. — You could put up a room divider or screen, resting on the sill, something that would be mobile and not too much a barrier, yet obvious to anyone approaching it.
CJ-ji, thanks for the pump info. I’m copying this and keeping it for reference. At the rate the rain is coming down we *may* be doing pumps this fall after all.
This is New England…remember grade school history stories of settlers clearing the rocky New England fields? Rocks are no problem as we literally (and I do *mean* literally) have tons of them. Some of them are quite beautiful with lichens and mosses on them. Proge wants to line the upper part of the pond with fieldstone and then lay a course around the top of the berm instead of flagstone. The idea is to keep it wild and natural looking…..that doesn’t mean we won’t have some chili pepper lights in the trees.
Joe-ji, if you don’t want to dig a pond have you considered a preform? You could dig enough to level it and surround it with rock and soil. It would not be huge but it would be water to contemplate and easy to remove if you should have to move. Just a thought…… 🙂
…or…do you know what happens when the hose clamp on a 2000 gallons per hour marine tank pump rusts and snaps?
I’d strongly recommend stainless steel or plastic hose clamps to prevent any further accidents of this kind.
On amazon.com, enter “hose clamp stainless” into the search and go for the “all stainless steel” variants. Likewise, “hose clamp nylon” will bring up variants of plastic hose clamps. They might do even better in salt water environment.
Another idea would be some safety shut-off for the pumps by monitoring the water flow. No water flow at the exit of the line -> leakage or jammed intake -> shut down and send alarm.
With best regards
Ektus.
That sounds like a winner.
Fast and easy water threshold to keep the finished part of the cellarfloor dry: a rubber stick-to-the-floor strip 1,5″ high, see http://www.accessibleconstruction.com/services/bathrooms/25.html
We used to have something like this, a solid rubber strip 1″ high in our previous bathroom around the shower area, to keep the rest of the bathroom floor dry (no shower tray).
I actually thought of your aquarium when I read the following article about 6 figure aquariums in the New York Times home and garden section:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/garden/19aqua.html?ref=garden
We are challenged enough by our 30 gallon freshwater tank with neons and platys. I really admire the dedication it takes to run a marine tank.
For anyone who runs into a water problem in the house that’s non-carpeted. I’ve had some seepage problems in my basement and the floor drain is NOT at the lowest point. I found I can scoop water with a deep, plastic dustpan and a bucket faster than my 5 gal. shopvac or the ancient carpet cleaner. A 5 gal. shop vac can get too heavy for a woman to lift. I finally bought a commercial floor squeege. One of the rubber rakes with a squeege on the other edge is also helpful.
FYI try as I might, I cannot find the main seeping spot. I’ve used the concrete that hardens in water, too.