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Old 11-01-2016, 07:38 PM   #13
DragonFireSG
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Join Date: Jul 2015
Posts: 312
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Top half is side profile of the filter chamber. You can stop water from entering the filter by using a long standpipe to stop up the drain entrance on the bottom.
You will of course need to remove the bags of oyster shell first. They are generally fairly light though, and I doubt you will need to stop up the drain very often.

This chamber will have one or two ceramic airstones on the bottom to force water through the sacks of oyster shell to keep the shells relatively free of sediment. This is the dirty water chamber after all.

Maintenance involves shaking the sacks of oyster shell up to free loose debris. This debris will be caught by the sieve and will not get into the pond.
How often you do this will be determined by running conditions. Generally speaking the air will keep the shells quite free of debris.

The sieve catches debris up to 300 micron (200 if you upgrade the wedge wire - this means more regular maintenance tho!)

The debris is flushed to the bottom of the wedge wire, and collects there for removal. There are numerous videos out there detailing how cleaning is done.

The bottom of the sieve will have 3" holes drilled out as this is a submersible pump application. The water will flow out into the surrounding chamber, where it will be sucked out by the pair of submersible pumps.

The pumps will be connected to a Waterco MC16 (50 in the US) for fines removal. The waterco does a good job of removing material down to 50 microns. Beyond this will be a distribution manifold that feeds water to the shower, and the tangential returns.

The shower will not need any maintenance with this design. The sieve will need regular cleaning, probably not taking more than 10m a weekend. You will get a thick sludge which will make most excellent fertilizer for your garden. The waterco needs to be purged only when you see the fines start to build up inside the clear enclosure. This should be quite easy to do. I personally have no experience with that unit, though I am planning on getting some soon
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