Very awesome Mucky. I love the simplicity. Reminds me of a spin filter, kind of in a way if ya squint your eyes.
Squinting work great for lots of things. If I have a few beers and squint real hard my wife looks just like she did on the day we were married. Unfortunately that doesn’t work for her when she looks at me. :dunno:
I bet ya could put a type of connector at the input to really push some high flow through it. I have been looking for something to replace my pressurized filter, been using this as my mechanical filter. I would really like to do a S&G filter, but I have too many questions regarding these S&G filter that leave me unsettled.
I think this quilt batting filter works better than my old pressure filter, and it’s easier to clean. LOL
I think I am gonna doing somthing like what you have shown. Maybe scaled down a little. Using a 1 gallon flower pot. Make it a few inches thick. then put this into a 5 gallon bucket. Figure out how to do my gaskets and seals so I can add some pressure to it.
Very awesome Mucky. I appreciate ya sharing this !!! This is what I love about you guys.
A few questions. Hope'n i'm not bug'n.
Since it is so easy to release the debris, out of curiosity ... how is that none of the debris falls out as you are pulling the batting out of the water ??
I’m sure some of the debris does go through, but I think the bigger question is why all the debris doesn’t get sucked right through the batting in the first place. After all the spaces between the batting fibres is much bigger then the fine particles it is trapping?
I believe the answer is because those fine particles are sticky. They get stuck to each other, and they get stuck to the fibres of the quilt batting. Kind of like sawdust gets stuck to your sweater if you are working around a saw. Vigorously shake your sweater after, or better yet blow compressed air at it and you can remove the sawdust.
Have ya thought of using micron screening wrap around it ?? such as wrap a single layer of 300 micron screen around the bucket, then a .5~1 inch of batting, then 200 micron screen wrap, then .5~1 inch of batting, then 100 micron screen wrap.
I do pre-filter the water before going to the quilt batting, my vortex settlement filter catches most of the big stuff. I thing micron screens would just get plugged up right away, unless used in a sieve type application where it constantly gets washed off.
How often would ya have to clean a filter like this ?? seems like you could make it bigger so that ya don't have to clean it as often.
Last time I changed it was a couple days before I started this thread, so it has been just about a month. I’m sure I could have left it at least another week, maybe more. Problem is if I leave it to long the water level drops in the tank too much and my pump will start sucking air and lose it’s prime. I can live with once a month cleaning or changing of the filter material. I have two of them, so when I change it I just pull out the dirty one and pop in the clean one. That only takes a minute, but the cleaning later takes about 15 minutes. L
I am told sand & gravel filters achieve the same as the expensive sieve filters as well depending on how fine of a sand is used ... I still do not completely understand how these S&G filters are cleaned. Something about using a powerful blower to shoot strong air in a frequency that dislodges the stuff then ya dump the dirtied water down a gutter or wherever.
The entire deal with sieve filters is that it is self cleaning ... ya never have to shut off any pumps when dumping the bucket where the gunk drops or don't even need a container depending on how it is configured.
I don't know much about S/G filters either, but there’s a great thread over in Koiphen comparing rotating drum filters and sieve filters and even vortex settlement chambers. Apparently for a sieve filter to be truly “self cleaning” you need to leave the a the discharge valve open to allow the sediment to wash out, (to a drain somewhere) and apparently you can lose a fair bit of water doing this, so it is recommended you only do this in conjunction with an auto fill valve installed. Otherwise you have to remove the debris manually from sieve filters, usually done by scooping it out with your hand.
One guy makes a good case for vortex filters against sieves, using a similarity between sugar in a coffee cup and sediment in a vortex filter, if you dump the sugar in a cup and don’t stir the bottom the sugar will sit at the bottom, but if you put sugar in a sieve it will continually get washed by the water until it dissolves and mixes with the water going through the sieve.
I considered a sieve when I set up my filter system, but opted out because my vortex filter is more friendly to small pond critters (fry, tadpoles, small frogs, turtles, etc…) If all I wanted in my pond was big koi, probably a sieve, or a rotating drum filter would be the way to go.
I bet the filtering quality is the same. I know the Rotary Drum Filters filters water, removing particles as small as 40 microns !!! That's crazy small.
