Thanks guys. I'm quite excited about this!! We're fixing up leaks in the plumbing (as expected). We didn't do tight seals for this trial run so we can tweak before putting a tighter fit using plumber's tape. We only glued certain joints due to the high pressure of the return.
It is pretty loud...but the noise significantly dropped once we added the bulby thingy. It softened to a slight trickle. The overflow furthest away from the sump isn't noisy at all since it travels further. I'm looking into doing a durso standpipe, but that'll be later.
In the sump room, we definitely plan on extending the pipe to drop lower into the sump. We just wanted to test the overflow/return cycle to make sure everything was working well. That's not even the final configuration nor the final container we're using. We will get a bigger rubbermaid so we can put a container inside it to catch the intake water, then have it overflow into the main tub. Some of the dirty water will be pumped up to a fuge w/ a small maxijet in that sump room, which in turn will have a pipe overflowing out to the main tank so pods can get in. Quite an undertaking! But I guess that's what I'm in this hobby for -- to really make a system that works for us :) Plus it keeps the hubby busy building me stuff and away from his computer (he's a computer geek).
According to that head loss calculator that rcpilot posted in another post, after all the bends and stuff, we end up with a flowrate of just over 800gph. Of course, the calculation might not be so accurate, because one of the returns has a shorter distance to travel. But I'm losing quite a bit. I'm going to try to raise the sump a foot to just get a little more. I played with the calculator, and even if I put it right under the tank, I'd still get 1000 gph. So I guess worrying about its output might not be worth it.
Maybe I'm obsessing too much :) I feel like Tim from that show Home Improvement..."More power! Argh! Argh! Argh!"
