Disaster strikes

[Paul B]

OMG, what am I going to do? I am beside myself.
(a few minutes ago I was two feet to the right)

I was designing a new venturi valve for my home made 5' skimmer which is, I don't really know, maybe 15 years old, and you know how those large vinyl hoses get in that time. Nice and brittle. Anyway, the entire bulkhead fitting where the venturi screws into, cracked and came out. Luckily, I drained the skimmer before I did this because I knew I would have trouble with it.
I am sure all of those years of injecting ozone into it did not help.
Now there is a large hole in the side of the skimmer and I am sure water would not want to stay in the thing I can live for a few days (or forever) without the skimmer but it also feeds my algae trough which I really want to keep working.
This seems like a good time to clean the skimmer being I can hardly see through it anymore. I am soaking it in bleach now then it will be vinegar.
I had to install a temporary pump to feed the algae trough.
The skimmer bracket where it is bolted to the back of the tank is also very rusty and needs replacement so I can do that also.
Sometime you need to have an accident to get time to maintain these things.
After I get the thing back together and cleaned I still want to design a new venturi valve. The thing works pretty good but there is always room for improvement.
Have a great day
Paul

You can see the bulkhead here with the blue on it and the air hose stuck into the venturi

 

[JoshF]

unplanned maintenance

That's always the fun part of projects. You start doing one thing and then there are a whole lot more that you realize need doing. I was helping a friend do something in his attic and we realized that all the bathroom fans and the kitchen exhaust fans just vented into the attic rather than to the outside. Then we did that and found a few other problems.... It gets to be a slippery slope. I've heard a few stories where people start one of these projects and find so much stuff to do that they decide it's just the excuse to upgrade!

Started doing one thing and found about 15 more to do...

 

[Paul B]

Here is the bracket that held the weight of the skimmer. It is a ball of rust and it was galvanized steel. I designed a new one from stainless steel and coated much of the tank stand with 2 part epoxy paint.
The skimmer is back together and better than new. When the paint dries I will install it back on the tank.

 

[Paul B]

Of course one of the MH lights croaked at the exact time the skimmer broke.

What a bargain, the ballast was only $85.00.
So now the lights and skimmer are working. I am not going to touch anything for a while