HTH
Howard
Everything old is new again. I was using quilt batting at least 15 years ago and I am quite sure I got the idea from somebody else. So not bragging just saying.
A lot of what you see here is junk pressed into service. Either stuff works or it does not. Sometimes I put on my engineer's hat and make stuff nice but often I just use the junk especially if I do not see the setup as long term. So if you have an aversion to junk read no further!
Back then I had 2 of these drip trays over a box of bio balls sitting on the liner. Today I found the same trays fit nicely between the top bars on an IBC container. Something to lessen the impact of the water as it hits the quilt batting will be setup later. Does not have to be fancy. In this case the water feeding the trays is direct from the 55 gallon barrel filter so it is after the mechanical and bio filtration. The previous filter should catch some of the solids.
I have been using the 3rd tray on the tower.
This picture demonstrates that 2 layers of this batting will in time plug solid and the tray overflow. Additional batting past 3 layers does not do much. There is a lot of dirt in this water because I dumped a number of bare root lilies in this kitty pool without rinsing them after pulling them from their pots.
Even with the batting saturated with much there was still enough water getting through to keep the lava rocks moist.
You can see the drip holes in the bottom of the tray. I am about to clean it.
Cleaning the batting with a garden hose.
Clean enough. The harder you work on cleaning it the less life you get from the batting.
Here we start reassembling the filter. Start with a section of light diffusion grating in the bottom to keep the batting from clogging the holes.
First layer.
Second layer.
All done.
A lot of what you see here is junk pressed into service. Either stuff works or it does not. Sometimes I put on my engineer's hat and make stuff nice but often I just use the junk especially if I do not see the setup as long term. So if you have an aversion to junk read no further!
Back then I had 2 of these drip trays over a box of bio balls sitting on the liner. Today I found the same trays fit nicely between the top bars on an IBC container. Something to lessen the impact of the water as it hits the quilt batting will be setup later. Does not have to be fancy. In this case the water feeding the trays is direct from the 55 gallon barrel filter so it is after the mechanical and bio filtration. The previous filter should catch some of the solids.
I have been using the 3rd tray on the tower.
This picture demonstrates that 2 layers of this batting will in time plug solid and the tray overflow. Additional batting past 3 layers does not do much. There is a lot of dirt in this water because I dumped a number of bare root lilies in this kitty pool without rinsing them after pulling them from their pots.
Even with the batting saturated with much there was still enough water getting through to keep the lava rocks moist.
You can see the drip holes in the bottom of the tray. I am about to clean it.
Cleaning the batting with a garden hose.
Clean enough. The harder you work on cleaning it the less life you get from the batting.
Here we start reassembling the filter. Start with a section of light diffusion grating in the bottom to keep the batting from clogging the holes.
First layer.
Second layer.
All done.
