Building a HUGE Pond Filter - Part 2 - Vortex Filters

Okay, welcome back, this is part two of my mega stupid big massive filter build for my pond Today we're going to be concentrating on the vortex part of this filter that is a vortex It's quite an old design, these have been out for decades, they would normally be used on koi ponds and they would normally be gravity fed so you would normally have a bottom drain in your pond Water would drain out via gravity into here, it would swirl around, heavy muck would settle out, and then you'd have a bottom drain on here, you could open and let all of that settled crap out of the filter. This one, unfortunately, is going to be pump fed, and while that isn't ideal, I will still get good settlement out of these. Pump fed isn't ideal because, by the very nature of a pump, it's got spinning blades. Anything that comes into the pump is going to get chopped up into smaller bits and fed up into the filter. A gravity system would be totally different. If you've got huge lumps of fish muck, that's going to travel through your gravity system in one big lump. And it's going to be a lot easier to be taken out. So by having three of these... We've got a good chance of settling the muck out even though it is pump fed and I'm going to put something in here which will aid in that settlement as well. First thing to do is to put a fitting on here which is the inlet. I'm going for rubber, rubber four inch fittings and that will take a four inch solid pipe. I'm not going all solvent all the way through because I may want to jig this round at a later date. I may even want to take one or more of these out in favor of a big Drum filter. I don't know. Having a rubber fittings will give me that option to change it at a later date. Not sure if that's coming out very well on film, but this is basically sealed, so we need to cut that off just with an ordinary wood saw. It doesn't have to be particularly sharp. And on our outlet we need to do the same, so that is going to be cut off with a wood saw. Actually before we do that we might as well drill the hole for our bottom drain. And to do that, I'm using a two and a half inch hole saw. There you go. That's the perfect size for this particular fitting, which is classed as a two inch tank connector. Now I'm not going to go too near the bottom, because although I do want that muck to drain out, if I put it too near the bottom, I'm not going to get the locking nut on the inside of here. So I'm going to step it up probably about an inch from the bottom. I actually had some water in the bottom there. I should have emptied it out. Okay, we're gonna step this back about an inch and that should clear us of any thick plastic that might be around this cap here. That looks good. So that one we've just cut was the outlet at the top. This is the inlet at the bottom. We're gonna do the same, just step it back about an inch. There you go, spot on. Now I've already done that to the other two Vortex filters and I've already joined the rubber connectors on as well. And that's the rubber connectors that we're using, 90 degrees and T-pieces. If you notice, that's swept that way, so the water flow would be like that. So you want some water to go there, some water to go there. That's how we've got it set up on those filters. Just in case you missed the note at the start, the reason I'm using rubber instead of solvent weld, which is basically glued permanent fittings, is because at some point I might want to jig this around. Using this gives me the option. Okay, before we flip this upside down and put those rubber fittings on, I might as well put the drain in the bottom of here. So on the outside, I'm going to fit that through our newly cut hole right in the bottom of there. And that's got a rubber washer to make sure it's watertight. Then on the inside, this plastic locking nut is screwed on, tightened down to make sure that there's no water leaks out the bottom of here. That detaches from the tripod. So hopefully I can get the camera in and show you exactly what's happening. See, but we're basically just tightening that nut up. Make sure that it's really, really tight. And when we've done that, we're just going to go to the outside and just give it a good turn if we can. That's it. Absolutely solid. Right, so we've got the three big vortex units. I'm going to put the rest of these fittings on, we'll get it connected up with 4 inch pipe and then hopefully if I can get some help we'll be able to lift these up in one go back up onto that stand up there. Now these fittings are really thick, good quality rubber and they've got a stainless steel band that goes around here. It's almost like a really, really big hose clip. And you just screw it up, it tightens it up, and it locks it to here, making it really, really watertight. Okay, I think you can see what's going to happen here. Water's going to come in. Obviously, these are going to be linked up with 4-inch pipe. So it's going to come in, it's going to go into that one, into that one, and into that one, all at the same time. It's then going to come out the top, there, there, and there, and head off to our next section. So now all we need to do is just measure some of this 4-inch pipe. Get it cut and get it connected between these rubber fittings. Well that works out pretty awesome. Each piece that I need to cut is 17 inches exactly. Now of course you could just use that same reasonably blunt wood saw to cut this, but I've got something that's going to make a much cleaner job. I'll just make sure that these are nice and clean so that when our rubber squashes down on them it makes a good proper seal. Very good. Now all we need to do... Let's tighten these up and everything will be linked together. Now when I'm tightening these up, I'm just squeezing around here just to check that the solid pipe actually comes right to the end where it's meant to come to. It doesn't want to be extending beyond there in case there's any sort of pressure on here that might cause it to cut. It wants to be just here at the lip where it's meant to be. Right, I've got this one to do, I've got the other two to do on the other side of the filter, there's no point filming that, you've seen what's happening, so I'll get these tightened up, and then I'll wait until Colin comes, he can give me a lift into there with this system joined together. Okay, so I've flipped it over, I'm just waiting for Colin to arrive now to give me a lift in with it, that's where it's going to go, up here, and I'm just going to show you what I'm going to do inside of these Vortex units. So normally they wouldn't have this. There'd just be an open unit, a little bit like a Dyson vacuum, the water would just spin around here, just like a Dyson vacuum cleaner. Water would spin around here, and in the middle of this vortex, that's where the water would settle out. Anything suspended would just drop through that grid into the bottom. And from there, when we get our tap fixed, you would just open the tap and drain the muck off the bottom. And then in there, I'm going to drop 11 or 12 big brushes. Now these are approximately 18 inches long by about 8 inch diameter and they're really good quality. These ones are from Cockney Coy. Actually, the vast majority of this stuff that I've showed in this video is from Cockney Coy. All these fittings, the vortex units, these, the taps, everything is Cockney Coy. I'll put links to anything that might be relevant in the video description and also in the pinned comment. Okay, so that's 12 brushes in each one of these. So before the water even gets out of these vortices it's going to have to have gone through a lot of mechanical filtration. There you go, that's pretty well packed out. Our water is going to go in here, into here, spin around, work its way up and this is really going to be slow flow in here. Muck is going to settle out, it's going to cling to these, this is going to do a hell of a job. Then the water is going to go out, link up with water coming out of the other ones and go along to the next section. I'm not sure Colin is actually coming, said he'd be here in an hour and that was about an hour and a half ago. So I'm going to try and lift this in myself, which isn't a good idea and I would not advise doing that. Hey! Colin's here. Just been telling the people at home that Colin might not be coming and he's here. See ya. You can give us a lift brother if you don't mind. There you go. I tell you what, just get around that side Colin. This one's already up, we'll just try and lift this up and then possibly slide it in. Awesome. That's pretty straight, isn't it? It's not bad. Good. Spot on. Okay, guys, unfortunately, this is the end of this video because it's fairly raining now, and I'm going to get soaking wet. It's going to be no good for joining fittings together, but I have got everything cut and more or less in position. So I'll just grab the camera and give you an explanation of what I've done and why I've laid it out in a certain way. Okay so the feed from our pond is going to come up here. I'll get a hose tail to go on here and attach an inch and a half flexible pipe to there. It'll probably run underneath here and then under the under the ground and away to the pond so you won't see it. So the water will come in here that will be turned off so it'll be forced this way through this tap into this two inch to four inch Rubber boot. Into the bend, and then it'll go into our three vortex units. And from there, it'll go out at the top of the vortexes and away to our next container, which is right at the back. Hopefully you can see I've just strung a little bit of pipe up here to indicate where it's going to be going. It's going to go right to the back there. And I've linked these three up at the bottom. One, two, and three. And I've put a tap on there. The idea behind that is, I'll literally just plug a piece of pipe in here, which will be attached to a flexible pipe, open that up for cleaning, so I can clean these things. And in order to help me clean, this extra part on the intake, this one, will actually go to another flexible pipe. The reason behind that is, this can be turned off. I'm not going to turn it now because nothing is actually fixed, but the ordinary inlet can be turned off. That'll keep all the water in here up to about there, so you have a good head of water in there. That'll help when cleaning that out, drain that off, you know, give all the everything here a good shake down, a good wash down. Muck will come out of there and this will go to a flexible pipe that once this is opened, the pond pump will just pump straight out the pond and I can direct the flexible pipe into the top of here and that's going to help me to wash out. Any muck that's in here out there and also that flexible pipe will be able to be dragged over here and right to the back and it'll help me to swill everything down for when I'm washing out. So I'll be washing everything out in pond water. Now all these fittings here are solvent weld so they're all going to be glued into position. The reason behind that is it's a lot more solid when you glue things in position and if I ever need to change anything I'll just uncouple it from here. cut the pipes back here and two inch fittings and two inch pipe is very easy to get very easy to join together it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to join four inch pipe together and getting four inch fittings and taps and all that that'll be really solid so there you go give this the thumbs up if you've liked it share it wherever you want and look out for part three because in that we'll be moving on to the next section after we get these glued in place