Acrylic External BeanAnimal Overflow Box

Looks great!

 

Yes looking great Bud! I see the birth of an L2 in the background.

 

Seriously cool shop!


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Don

 

getting excited for my new toys!

 

I was wondering about the weight of these boxes hanging on the bulkheads. Do you think that a 2x2 or a 2x4 screwed to the stand below it. Then going up to underneath the box to give it support is a good idea? The 2x4 could be perpendicular to the stand rail.


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Don

 

Yeah okay. The 1" drops should be supported anyway and that will help take weight off the the box as well.


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Don

 

Man the box is well made! Thanks.

I have a question that I think that you know the answer to. Can the drops be straight down or should they have the 45s in them to deal with starting right and or the purging of the air.. ?
I'm thinking of putting the sump directly under the box.


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Don

 

Bud,

I assume the box will be flush against the back of the tank, with only a gasket in between it and the tank wall. If there is concern about stress on the bulkhead or torque causing the gasket to leak, you could easily fill the gap at the bottom of the box (between it and the tank wall) with the same thickness of of material as the gasket. A simple thin strip would do. This will prevent the box from trying to "swing" in using the bulkheads as a hinge point.

 

I just slid two other gaskets in there. We are supporting them with 2x4's underneath the boxes too though so not sure they would have ever moved anyway.

I have mine running but still need to do some tweaking. I have not moved my 125 yet so I am only running 380gph with 1 pump for now.

Thanks for all the help! I will put some pictures up sometime next week.

 

Here is a picture of it before it was running

 

Reading the post again I can update the gasket order.

What we actually found to work was a gasket on the flange side inside the external box, between the external box and the glass because water will leak through the threads (I missed that one before), and GH has you put one between the internal overflow and the glass on the tank probably just for any imperfections in the glass or on the box when tightening them down. In total we needed 3 gaskets for each hole to make this work but it looks GREAT!

 

The gasket between the nut and wall does nothing to seal the system, as the threads are the leak point. That means that a gasket MUST be sandwiched between the outside of the tank and the outside of the box. You really only need (2) gaskets.

It is also a very good (not really optional) idea to support the standpipes. Standard conduit support strut and clamps can be used, or a block of wood with half round cutouts and velcro (as pictured in the original plans), etc.

 

I suppose a gasket on the flange side really doesn't matter because it is leaking into a box already filled with water

The system is up and running now I will fine tune later I have to go to fargo for the weekend but so far it looks to be working great!

 

Likely no harm in this case, but consider the surface contact area of each gasket. The gross contact area of all of the gaskets combines is what needs to be compressed by the nut. For such a shallow seal, no biggy. But consider a deeper bulkhead that has say 5 PSI of pressure on it. The NUT (remember from physics class) rides an inclined plance to create force against the gaskets. The total force applied to ALL the gaskets is the force applied applied by the inclined plane divided by the total surface area. So lets say we have 20 square inches of gasket material (both sides of all 3 gaskets) in contact with the tank. The nut (ignoring details) must at least provide around 100 pounds of sealing force for the 3 gaskets, but if only 2 were used only around 66 pounds.

Beyond the scope here... but this is a 80,000 foot flyover of how you would begin to calculate the thread size, number of threads engaged, torque required to seal, etc. It is no mistake the the head bolts on your chariot have a specific torque to be applied