Above liner bottom drain

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For the last two seasons i used a DIY bottom drain made from two trash pump suction strainers image.jpegconnected with 2" pvc. Flexible tubing connects this to the pump located in the skimmer box. At the pump connection I used a tee to allow a strainer to also draw water from the pond through the skimmer box. My goal is to circulate water from the deep end of the pond and draw surface water to move through the pump. The pump pushes the water to a 100 gallon stock tank filled with yellow flag iris, water hyacinth and lava rock. The water returns to the pond by flowing down a 2 tiered stream.image.jpeg

My question is would it make sense to remove the strainer at the pump and place a second pump in the filter box to draw water from the ponds surface. Can I tee this into the return with the current pump? My current pump is a pond master waterfall pump rated at 2600 gal/hr. It has a 1" outlet that I connected to a 1 1/2" pipe. The waterfall tub has 3 1.5" openings.

Additional info I run my pump year round. The bottom drain goes in the pond in May and is removed in Oct. When the bottom drain is not used I have a pre filter in the skimmer box made with furnace filter and quilt batting. I also use this pre filter set up at the holes in the tub to filter the water as it exits to the stream..
My goal is be able to filter the water through the skimmer box while bottom drain is running. I have a 500 gal/hr pump that I would use... A concern is overflowing the waterfall tub.
 
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I don't think you'd gain anything by adding a second pump since you are already drawing water from the surface. When you say "Can I tee this into the return with the current pump?" do you mean the discharge side of the pump? If so yes you could do that but you may have to add a valve to adjust the pressure and flow. By adjusting the flow you would be slowing down the turnover rate.
 
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I don't think you'd gain anything by adding a second pump since you are already drawing water from the surface. When you say "Can I tee this into the return with the current pump?" do you mean the discharge side of the pump? If so yes you could do that but you may have to add a valve to adjust the pressure and flow. By adjusting the flow you would be slowing down the turnover rate.
Yes I do mean the discharge side of the pump. My concern with my current set up is I am compromising the water pulled from the bottom because of the tee just before the pump intake that I connected a strainer to draw water into the skimmer box. I thought running two separate pumps one for bottom drain one for skimmer would make each work more efficiently. My hope was to plumb the second pump discharge to the discharge with the bottom drain pump.
 
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One thing you should be using is a sanitary wye not a tee. As long as your pump is strong enough you can run both lines off of it. It would be best to put in a valve to adjust how much water is coming in from the top and bottom. You may want to skim more and take water from the bottom less. In reality you don't need a bottom drain. Some people use them but a lot don't.
 
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One thing you should be using is a sanitary wye not a tee. As long as your pump is strong enough you can run both lines off of it. It would be best to put in a valve to adjust how much water is coming in from the top and bottom. You may want to skim more and take water from the bottom less. In reality you don't need a bottom drain. Some people use them but a lot don't.
The plumbing from the bottom drain to the pump is flexible tubing that's why I used a tee. I had to google sanitary wye wasn't familiar. Why would a sanitary wye be used instead of a tee and can a sanitary wye be used with flexible tubing?
When building the pond it was recommended to use the bottom drain above the liner to improve water circulation by pulling water from the bottom of the pond. My pond is populated with gold fish so the intention of the bottom drain wasn't for waste removal as with koi ponds.
I believe the pump is strong enough to run both. The water flowing from the water fall did not appear to be less compared to pump just running from skimmer alone. My thinking was to increase water flow by dedicating a pump to the bottom drain and from the skimmer
 
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A sanitary wye does not restrict the flow of water like a tee does. A tee requires a 90 degree turn, If the pvc tee can connect then a wye could be used. They connect the same way, they both glue together. If you feel you need to increase the water flow then you may want to consider a pump with a larger discharge pipe. Although you have increased yours to 1 1/2" it still has to get through the 1" outlet. Have you determined how many gallons your pond holds and how fast you are turning the water over with your set up?
 
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A sanitary wye does not restrict the flow of water like a tee does. A tee requires a 90 degree turn, If the pvc tee can connect then a wye could be used. They connect the same way, they both glue together. If you feel you need to increase the water flow then you may want to consider a pump with a larger discharge pipe. Although you have increased yours to 1 1/2" it still has to get through the 1" outlet. Have you determined how many gallons your pond holds and how fast you are turning the water over with your set up?
The total volume is approx 1300 gal. The pump is
Pondmaster Pro HY-DRIVE™ 2600 gph

1' 2600
5' 2500
10' 2025
26'7" shutoff
Inlet: accepts 1.25" threaded fittings
Outlet: accepts 1.25" threaded fittings
Maximum Head: 26'7" shut-off

I have a 25 ft run from the skimmer box to the waterfall tub. The water enters at the bottom of the tub. The skimmer box is 1.5 ft deep. The deep end of the pond is 2.5 ft. So I'm not losing a lot of head pressure. I would think my turn over rate at worst is 1.5x/hr.
As I stated in OP I have a spare 500 gph pump and was wondering if it would make sense to use this to pull water into the skimmer and allow bottom drain to operate independently. It makes sense to me water pulled up from the bottom and re entering from the top would maximize water movement. Also as I stated earlier my mechanical filtration is set up in the skimmer box so I want to draw water in there.
The tee is barbed for flexible tubing. So I don't understand how it would work with a wye tee unless I changed the plumbing to pvc


 
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I misunderstood the type of flex pipe that you were using I thought it was the glue on type. You could get around the problem with some fittings but I wouldn't bother at this stage. Based on your pond size and pump size you are indeed turning the water over at least 1.5 times and hour. I don't think you need the extra pump, but you can use it. As I mentioned you may have to add an additional valve to lower the volume going into the 100 gallon stock tank or add additional outlets to the tank or make the existing outlet pipes larger. If you slow the water flow down coming out of the pond you will be defeating the purpose of the second pump. Think of your pond as a swimming pool. In a pool there is one pump and the flow from the bottom drain and the skimmers is controlled by a mixing valve. This is the best way to adjust things.
 
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I misunderstood the type of flex pipe that you were using I thought it was the glue on type. You could get around the problem with some fittings but I wouldn't bother at this stage. Based on your pond size and pump size you are indeed turning the water over at least 1.5 times and hour. I don't think you need the extra pump, but you can use it. As I mentioned you may have to add an additional valve to lower the volume going into the 100 gallon stock tank or add additional outlets to the tank or make the existing outlet pipes larger. If you slow the water flow down coming out of the pond you will be defeating the purpose of the second pump. Think of your pond as a swimming pool. In a pool there is one pump and the flow from the bottom drain and the skimmers is controlled by a mixing valve. This is the best way to adjust things.
Thanks for your input. After considering your comments I will not add the extra pump. Does the pump pull water at the same rate through the bottom drain which is connected to a 7 ft tube and the strainer in in the skimmer box connected to a 6 inch tube? Intuitively I would think their would be less pull through the longer connection. But my intuition has been wrong before!!
 
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Pumps are better at pushing then pulling. In your case you aren't really pulling it far, so I doubt there is much difference. The size of the pipe does make a difference and having a 1" opening will reduce the volume that can flow through it.
 
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Pumps are better at pushing then pulling. In your case you aren't really pulling it far, so I doubt there is much difference. The size of the pipe does make a difference and having a 1" opening will reduce the volume that can flow through it.
So to clarify, I can increase the flex tube to the inlet size of 1.25" to increase the amount of water flowing through the pump. This would improve circulation compared to the 1 inch diameter tube in the current set up.
Thanks again for your help
 
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Yes and no. The larger pipe will allow more volume however since it's being reduced to 1" at the pump that will slow it down. At some point the pump can only pump so much water. Think if you hooked up 4" pipe. There is no way that the pump could pump enough to fill the pipe. The 1 1/4" is probably as large as you can go. If the pump could handles a greater volume they would have built it with a larger inlet.
 

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