Help with plumbing from 1" bulkhead

[boontonbob]

While I am 98% done with plumbing in a new sump, skimmer and kalk reactor, I hit a snag that is giving me serious heartburn! I am running a 1.25 drain line to my fish room and finally got the right size bulkhead. It appears most people must run 1" pipe inside the bulkhead to drain, but this seems like such a waste by reducing flow. Plus, because I want to keep the 1.25 drain line beneath the BH. I'd like to thread my connector to the outside of the bulkhead, although there is an annoying 1/8" lip on the bottom and it prevents the standard 1.25 connector from attaching.

For simplicity, I would go ahead and plumb the 1" line inside, but the problem is I need to make a sharp 90 degree turn to drain to my sump in another room and the adapter arrangement drops me down lower then where the drain begins.

QUESTION: Has anyone been able to connect to the outside of bulkheads without having to try to cut off this lip? I am hesitant to start cutting into threaded fittings in fear of screwing them up. (baffling!!)

Any thoughts are appreciated. Maybe there is some connector that I am not aware of for this?
Thx

 

[malulu]

without picture is kind of difficult to vision what exactly what you need.

however, taking a wild guess, you can use the 1.25 drain line, then Tee to two 1" line to your sump or whatever... (not sure this answered your question)
good luck.

 

[JohnS_323]

I don't know of any fittings that go over the outside of a bulkhead. It's really annoying because it would be a great way to get more flow through them. I've never tried cutting off that lip either (I have some spare bulkheads lying around - maybe I'll give it a shot).

It looks like the 1" pipe is the only way to go. Is there anyway you could replace the sharp 90* turn with either two 45's or a piece of flexible PVC? A more gradual turn would help reduce the loss of flow.

Another thing you can do is to come out of the inner part of the bulkhead at 1" and step up right away to 1.25" That might help with any reduction in flow you'd see at the 90* angle.

Good luck Bob. Keep us posted.

 

[boontonbob]

Thanks guys, it helps. I've been running out of patience on this as of late. John, you nailed it on the head, this is annoying! My plan is to try to cut off the bulkhead and see if i can thread a 1.25" right to it. If worse comes to worse, I can feed a 1" pipe through if I can't catch the thread. I know there is a likelihood for leaks, but I am going to look to seal the connection well with silicone if it even works

As a plan B, I also bought some 1.25 flexible hose used for pools that will actually suit better for taking the 90degree turn. (Because of the height of my sump in my fishroom, I don't have the room to drop down any lower then what a 90 would give.) Since this is the drain and not the return, I would think gravity should still give enough thrust for flow. What I did not want to do was to have several feet of level line or even worse any kind incline. That would obviously kill the flow!