Jacob’s Blog

Herbie Overflow
Funny name for a nifty idea. A guy by the name of Herbie came up with this, not that it’s an earth shattering idea but he was the first to document it and become recognized for the idea. Today I completed the addition of a Herbie Overflow to Project 360. Before I get into the install, let’s review why we use standpipes and look at a few different standpipe/overflow designs.

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Yes we do!

Anyone remember this fan from a post long ago?…

The air exchange is now hooked up under the house. I pulled the electrical run for it (good to have some cable in my conduit finally), wired up the fan, and connected it to the ducting going to the tank as well as the ducting to the foundation vent (don’t want all that warm moist air under the floor boards). We fired it up and it blows… in a good way of course. The duct noise is not too bad, sounds about like the A/C running in the house. The final tie-in to the canopy is yet to be done. On that note I should probably mention that I may scrap the canopy that I built! Wouldn’t you know it - another idea came to me in the shower recently. Stay tuned!

As I was explaining to my friends on Reef Central recently, I ran into my first technical problem with the plumbing. My divert valve is leaking at the seat. This means that most of the flow from my return pump is making it back to the tank, however a small trickle is being lost via the auto-water change drain line! I discovered this while working under the house to complete the air exchange system (more on that later). Since I had not tied in the auto-water change drain line to the house drain it was dripping to the ground. I noticed recently that I had been replacing more and more evap. water… which didn’t make sense due to the damp weather. Well now I know why, it wasn’t evaporation it was saltwater being lost!!

This is the valve that I have now, which has either gone bad or has been bad from the start. It’s a Chemtrol-Nibco model S51D2-E

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