So as part of this experiment I have been trying out different designs of uplift.
All of the following have been carried out with the same airpump in 12 inches/30cms of water, with the airstone at the bottom of the tube.
The tubing is 20 mm id overflow tubing.
If you reference the photos attached the stuff below should make sense lol.
So the first test was was a 90 bend on the top of the airlift v a tee fitting so that the air, could escape 1 way and the water another ( this was gleaned from a koi keepers forum).
No contest the tee won hands down, the 90 was taking 20 secs to fill a 1 litre jug at watere level, the tee 16 secs.
I will say at this point the timings are for comparison purposes and aren't meant to indicate absolute flow rates.
Next I inserted a tee fitting and a 90 as a way of getting water in above the airstone and thus removing that restriction.
Hey presto the filling time came down to 13 seconds.
So then I added a 40mm 'chamber' at the base ( 40mm tee fitting) to try and remove any lasting restrictions to the water flow.
This gave no improvement, so I thought I would utilise the extra space and put in a larger air stone ( all the tests so far were with a 10 mm air stone).
Some a 40mm round airstone was found in my bucket of bits, knock me down with a feather, time came down to 10 seconds.
I intend trying a 40mm uplift but thats for another time ( need a trip to the hardware store).
Hope you folks find this info useful.
