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Joined: Mar 2010
Very timely! I was at our rental house on Thursday in Ainaloa, mowing and weed eating, and happened to peak into the catchmant tank. I was surprised to see the water to the tip top of the tank. I called Tim, who does catchment tank cleaning for us, and he told me how to get the overflow working again. That tank is one of the higher walled, but smaller diameter ones, so I had to use a short step ladder. On this tank, as the pipe exits the tank, it has a 90 degree elbow, and then about a 3-4 foot long straight section of pipe, and just shoots the water straight out. That straight section is not glued to the elbow, so I removed it. Then, I got up on the short ladder and lifted the overflow piping assembly up off of the edge of the tank, and then submerged the whole thing under the water. Then, I started turning the whole pipe assembly over under water, and some good air bubbles came out, so water rushed in. I turned the whole thing over maybe two times till there were no more air bubbles. Then, you orient the assembly exactly as it sits on your tank when it's in place, and lift it straight up. Don't tilt it, as you might let water out and get another air pocket in it. It will be fairly heavy when it's all full too. Lift it straight up, so the outlet part gets back into place, and lower in onto the edge of the tank. The water should then be gushing out. Then, I pushed the 3-4 foot straight section back on, and it took a good 15 minutes till the tank level lowered enough so it stopped gushing water out. It had a clear rubber piece that was put under the pipe, where it sits on the tank and liner, to protect the liner, but I must have dropped that into the tank. I took a small section of a towel I cut, and put it there. It's just to protect the liner from abraiding a hole in it from the weight of the overflow assembly sitting on the liner.
And, yes, you have a problem if your tank is full to the edge. Here's what can happen. The overflow tubing controls how full your tank gets. You don't want the water to overflow the edge of that tank, and it then just runs down the sides, and you will quickly get rust. Also, the water just running down the edges of your tank can erode away the dirt (maybe yours is on concrete?) under the tank, and can get your tank off level, which will erode it all the more at the low point. I was able to fix the problem before the big storm, as I was worried about erosion.
It's not a tough job. I was worried about, what if the overflow assembly slips out of my hands while I had it submerged inside the tank, but no problem. It took me more time getting slack in the cover so I would have room to manipulate the overflow tube assembly, and to secure the cover afterwards.
If I can do this, anyone can. If your tank is one of the shorter ones, like 21 feet across, then you probably don't even need a ladder.
Funny, because, when this happened, the first thing I did was search here about how to fix the problem, and found nothing.
My daughter rents the house from us, and I am thinking one of the kids from her day care may have pushed the overflow pipe around, so it lost the prime. That's just a guess. But, you can fix this yoursefl, and don't need to call catchment people in to do it.
Jon in Keaau/HPP
Jon in Keaau/HPP
