75 gallon tank

I want to start by thanking melev (Marc) for a great plumbing article and the follow up comments as well for helping me plan and begin the plumbing on my tank (finally).

Marc's article can be found here: http://www.reefaddicts.com/content.p...o-it-correctly

Here's the tank and sump on the stand (yeah).


Here's most of the plumbing parts. Some of you will notice there's a single union ball valve in the pile. Marc's article suggests these are not to be trusted. However, it was half the price of the double union ball valve, so of course, like an idiot, I bought it. That said, I should have listened to Marc's advice, because when I really started looking at the single union ball valve, I understood what Marc was saying. The union side of this valve doesn't seal the way a normal union or double union ball valve seals. When the union side is removed from the ball valve, it takes the part of the valve that the ball valve would normally seal against out and the ball part of the valve will rock back and forth in the housing. It's hard to explain and maybe part of why I didn't understand Marc's complaint with the valve until I saw it for myself. So this brings up my first reitteration of one of Marc's suggestions: take things apart while still at the store . (1) This allows you to make sure that all the o-rings are in place, (2) if I'd pulled this apart at the store, I'd never have bought it. It was obvious it didn't seal once I took the union side apart. Anyway the single union ball valve has been replaced with a double union ball valve. You may also notice, since I have no way to transport long sticks of pipe, I bought 5' sticks. Lowe's had 5' sticks but didn't have any 1 1/2" and Home Depot cut a couple of 10' sticks in half for no cost. However, fair warning, the cut was aweful and I lost a few inches from both halves because I had to cut out the very crooked and heavily jagged cuts from the Home Depot employee. That said, atleast I could get the pipe home without it hanging out the window or some such nonsense and if a couple of inches is going to mean the difference between your project working or not, buy another stick of pipe. It's the cheap part of the plumbing supplies.


First objective was to get the overflow hung.
Here's a better picture of the "chip out" I talked about in my blog about drilling the tank for the overflow. With the black paint on the back of the glass the chip out shows better.


The chip out is at about 7:30. It's about a 1/16" to 1/8" deep and about the same wide.

The next part I tried to do pretty quick to keep the silicone from setting up before I got everything together, so unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of the actual process. Plus, I had silicone on my fingers and didn't want to get it all over my phone.

First I put some teflon tape on the threads of the threaded street elbow and screwed it into the bulkhead.


As you can see, I didn't take a picture until after it was mounted and some of the plumbing was already completed.

Then I spread some silicone in the chip out and around the threads of the bulkheads, put one of the rubber gaskets on each of the bulkheads, inserted the bulkheads through the holes I had drilled previously from the back of the tank, put another rubber gasket on the threaded part of the bulkhead sticking through the tank and hung the overflow on the bulkheads.


If you look close you can see a shiny area about 1/4" wide on the threads. This is where I had spread silicone all the way around the bulkhead in the threads.

Next I stuck the bulkhead nut on the bulkheads, snugged up the nuts, adjusted the height of the overflow as best I could (see previous hole drilling blog for additional discussion about the overflow adjustment), and tightened the bulkheads down as tight as I dared. Having never used bulkheads before, I hope I got them tight enough, but I certainly didn't want to overtighten them and crack the tank. They are fairly snug. About as tight as I could get them without using channel locks or some other tools, but then again, I work at a computer all day so I'm not exactly the strongest of people.
Here's the finished product from inside the box.


And here's a view of the box in it's final resting place from outside.


Unfortunately, this view also shows off my crappy seam resilicone job and why I was temped to cut out the silicone I'd just put in and start over. For the most part it disappears (or atleast doesn't look as bad) when water is in the tank, so that's why I decided not to start over.

Next it was time to start cutting pipe and glueing parts together.
Here's the saw I used (I've had this saw for nearly 20 years. Don't know why, but admitting that suddenly makes me feel older than I felt just a few minutes ago.) and a close of up the blade. It worked very well and make nice smooth cuts. Home Depot had a package of 2 for $45 at Home Depot or a single blade for $30 or $35, so I bought the pack of 2. (Bought these when I was buying material for the stand, cause the blade that was on the saw was over 10 years old. I haven't used this saw much since moving to Washington.)



And here's the glue. I chose this glue specifically because it said it worked and cured in near freezing temperatures, so I knew the cold garage wouldn't cause any problems. It also specifically mentions that it works with flexible pvc, so I knew it'd work on the spaflex I planned to use for parts of the project.


If you choose to use this glue, don't muck around. It sets faster than other pvc glues I've used in the past. Here's a picture of the first joint I glued where alignment counted and as you can see, I didn't get it aligned before the glue set. Oh well, lesson learned (work fast) and I know where there's more pvc fittings.
Oops.


Since Marc's "plumbing primer" article is so good and covers all the techniques, I didn't take pictures of every step along the way, just some intermediate shots of the work I've done so far.
Unions glued to overflow elbows.


A couple of bends to reduce some of the noise of the overflow (per previous suggestion).


And the stub pipes to get the overflows down to the sump. Notice the left pipe is completed with a 45 degree bend and some spaflex into the skimmer section of the sump.


Also, notice I left the stub pipes a little longer than necessary to accomodate the rigid insulation or foam camping pad that will go between the tank and the stand to accomodate any uneveness in the stand top. Eventually, I will add pipe supports to the 2x6 rim joist on the stand to take any pressure the hanging plumbing may be putting on the back of the tank.

Heating the spaflex for 4-5 minutes in the oven at 200 degrees per Marc's article worked really well to "unkink" the tight curl the spaflex had obtained from sitting on a spool for who knows how long. Here's a picture showing the curve of the spaflex as I bought it laying next to the section I had heated and straightened.


Unfortunately, I ran up against that pesky 8PM noise ordinance again and didn't get as far as I'd hoped, but I've made a good start. I have a good plan and should be able to finish up the plumbing over the weekend. (Nice long 3 day weekend coming up, wohoo!)

I'm really enjoying this build (I'm quite the tinkerer, so this project is right down my alley.) and I'm enjoying sharing the experience with everyone else. Hope you all are enjoying following along.

As always, all comments are welcomed.