I really hope someone can help me because I'm ready to scrap the whole skippy filter project and I'm wasting a lot of money trying to fix my skippy filter.
After last year's mess of having to clean the 4 pressured filters with UV every other day (5 sponges each) and still having extreme green water no matter how much chemicals/barley and other "clear water stuff" I poured into it, I installed a UltraKlear 5000 UV installed, with no results .I decided over the winter to build an oversized filter to take care of my algae problems.
So after 5 months of planning and doing research, buying plans, i built a 150 gallon skippy filter in the spring (March) which is suppose to be for a 4,500 gallon pond, mine is 2,000 gallons.
Unfortunately, there is only 1 foot from the back of the pond to the fence, so the closest area I could build it was 47 feet away from the pond. There's no spot closer. (filter is behind the gazebo)
During the build I installed a 6 inch PVC pipe underground from the pond to the filter to run power, tubing, security cameras, etc... I also, bought 2- 7,900 GPH pumps.
So here's my problem.... I have no problem getting the water from the pond to the filter, no problem at all. Having a impossible time getting the water back to the pond.
Solutions I've tried..... As seen in the 1st picture above....
During planning I knew that just connecting the tube to the outlet of the (non-pressurized) filter was not going to work, even though the filter is much higher then the pond (I tried and nothing flowed through the tubing). So from the filter, it goes to a 55 gallon collection barrel with Pump "B" in it and a low and high water cut off switch to keep the tank from flooding and pump from running when it did get low (not cheap). Kinda like a sump pump but with a high water cut-off switch too. Thinking that both pumps are the same it should be no problem. Well..... On some tests the pump empties the tank faster then the filter drains to the tank, but 85% of the time the pump is not keeping up and the tank starts to fill up within 10 minutes. Also, during the test I didn't like how the pump was cycling on and off. So I bought a extremely large, expensive 9,000 GPH sump pump with built in float from a plumber friend and added the high water cut-off to it. Same results.
So, to bring you up to yesterday....
So I purchased a 13,200 gph varible speed inline pump with primer, So I connected a small length of tubing from the outlet of the filter tank to the inlet of the pump and then the outlet tube to the outlet of the pump and see what happens. Well, it had worked for a minute or so then the filter tank started to fill up and I had to power down before "Noah's Flood" was going to happen.
So I'm at my wits end... and broke LOL....I need help...... No problem getting water to the filter, how do i get it back to the pond RELIABLY without a human watching it to make sure floods don't happen. Please, oh please give me suggestions on what I should do, is there a pressured filter I could just buy for a 2,000 to 5,000 that I'll just install in the filter area that is extremely easy to clean and WORKS. I'm ready to tear out the whole pond.
Thank you in advanced.