This shows the 9mm thick polypropylene sheets being welded together by heat gun and polypropylene welding rod.

Although it’s not shown on the shot, all the internal polypropylene fixtures are welded into place before the outer box is finally assembled.

These internal fixtures comprise of the brush box retainer, the perforated transfer wall, the two 4” diameter polypropylene sockets, the outer bottom frame supports, the cartridge tracks, the end sheet tracks, the circular end baffle and the external threaded nipple for water pump connection, which can either be 1.5” or 2”.

The standpipe and the brush box are also fabricated by JBR.

After each carcass is completed it must then filled with water to ensure no leaks are present.

Whilst all this is going on, some 20 meters away over at Rose Cottage, the cartridge blocks need to be made up – usually by me, believe it or not – I love making up these blocks – however, you should hear the language when I complete a block and check it to find I’ve missed a washer out!

The carcasses are then carried from JBR to Rose Cottage where Ian Miles fits the powder-coated steel support frames which are made and delivered by Mark – yet another Eric aficionado who uses them on his own Koi pond.

The bottom frame simply sits on the external supports whilst the top frame is drilled and secured firmly with waterproof bolts.

As you can see from the photo, Ian Miles has already started fitting the aeration lines. Ian has a jig for each model that is placed against the unit so the entry holes are correctly marked out for drilling. This enables him to assemble the entire outer manifold and slot it as one single piece through the pre-drilled holes.

Words here about the aeration assemblies, all pipe work and fittings used are to 3/8” UPVC solvent-weld pressure specification.

Depending on the size of the model there are tank connectors, a threaded hose adaptor, tee-pieces, plain elbows, plain/thread elbows, plain/thread sockets (to connect and be able to disconnect the air bars) and of course, the air bars themselves complete with end caps.

Believe it or not there’s eight meters of 3/8” pressure tube required to fit out a single Eric Four unit!

Once the aeration assembly and air bars have been fitted, the end sheet, the EricMat blocks and the brush box simply slot into place.

The standpipe is then placed in one of the 4” sockets and the two very important 4” to 115mm rubber boots are placed inside next to it.

This is how the units look at this stage.

Next follows the hinged lids and the owner’s personal name plates can now be riveted on as shown.

The final part is dusting and wiping them down in readiness for transportation – black polypropylene attracts and collects dust just for fun!

By the way, just trust me, these units are ‘flipping’ heavy!

If you would like to talk about any of this, please feel free to visit the ERIC Pond Filters forum!

Waddy.

You can find more information on the Pond build itself here and if you have any questions, please post them on the ERIC Pond Filters Forum, the thread for this new koi pond build can be found here.

Waddy.

A long, rectangular design (that blends in with the existing York stone patio) with internal surface dimensions of 38’ x 8.5’ split into four sections of 9.5’ by 8.5’ with a custom bottom drain placed dead centre of each section.

As you can see from these shots, the land fell steeply away from the patio and was overrun with plants and shrubs.

As mentioned, Robbie wastes no time, this was how it looked only one day later…

Four Eric Three units will handle this (and more) very comfortably and I will keep posting updates as they come along.

Waddy.

PS. The already high daily website hits have gone ballistic since the forum was announced on the website and I can see all those from all around the world who have interests in my systems and the time they spend taking in the information.

Once again, if you have any questions, please post them on the forum, which is free, or contact me directly.

In view of the ever-increasing numbers of daily hits on this website – many from some of the most unlikely parts of the ‘Koi globe’, I’ve decided to pilot test an open forum on here.

Please click here to visit ERIC Pond Filters Forum

The forum is open to anyone who wishes to register for free and this also includes existing Eric owners who hopefully will assist me in answering any hands on queries some readers may have regarding Eric Pond Filters.

Once again, this forum is only ‘testing the water’ right now and if it proves to be worthwhile it will become a permanent feature.

Best to all, Waddy.

For smaller systems up to 2,200-gallons (10,000 liters) – these are covered with the Eric TWO and Eric TWO P – each containing two EricMat blocks.

For ponds around 4,000-gallons (18,000 liters) these are easily handled with the Eric THREE units which contain four EricMat blocks but there has always been a gap that needed plugging for pond volumes of around 3,000-gallons.

In view of this here is the ‘Eric TWO point FIVE’ unit with three EricMat blocks which will handle water volumes of around 3,000-gallons (13,500 liters).

The brush box remains the same as in the Eric THREE and Eric FOUR units but there are some cost savings to be made with a smaller box rather than having to pay for the Eric THREE outer box with four EricMat blocks and there is also the space-saving aspect to consider by way of the smaller box.

Price can be found by clicking on the model range to the left.

All Eric units are simply single-chamber boxes.

How long can it possibly take – continued 21/01/12

Apart from exposing a wall that looked like a wall at ground level, when exposing it we discovered there wasn’t a wall below it anyway. Add to that a week of some of the foulest weather imaginable, well enough of all that!

Ian Miles worked with me at Infiltration for many years and thankfully he was the guy who did the entire breakdown and installation for me almost unaided.

It’s impossible to predict what’s below the ground when an existing system has to be removed before a new one can be installed and this was no exception, some parts of this were a doddle and others were pigs!

The ‘doddle’ shown here was that it only took the depth of three concrete blocks as a base for Eric Three to give us perfect water level to the millimetre.

The ‘pig’ was the special fitting seen on the right that had to be hand-fabricated in order to give us the correct angle and correct level in order to get water supply from the 6” outlet of the vortex into the 4” inlet of Eric.

The 90-degree bend in brown soil pipe is the 4” waste line taken directly to the sewer.

A clearer view of the 4” waste from Eric, the existing drain line from the vortex unit to the sewer was retained and one of the filter chamber drains has been used for the system overflow to the sewer.

Bearing in mind the new unit is 12” above the old base of the original filter there’s now less than 50% of the space being taken up by the Eric unit.

There are four EricMat blocks running this system and a quick calculation tells me that if the 48 individual sheets in question were stacked on top of one another, this would represent a block measuring 500mm x 190mm x 912mm or 20” x 7.5” x 35” only.

To compare this volume with the volume taken up by the media removed from the two boxes earlier it represents about 10%!

AND for the first time in 15 years, this Koi pond will now become a ‘proper’ Koi pond!

Waddy

How water actually moves forward constantly as a ‘block’ in Eric Filters is something that’s hard for many readers to understand.

In truth the reason for this is a combination of the narrow width (20” or 500mm), the shallow water depth (20” or 500mm) and the 9” dia/23mm central end baffle set off the end wall only some 1”/25mm from the suction inlet of the water pump.

However, despite the detailed verbal explanation on my part, many have still questioned the theory and have indicated that photographic or video evidence would be much easier to grasp.

I have often wondered how this evidence could be shown but hadn’t any real idea as to how to go about it.

Two days ago Les Bean, an Eric owner, who posts on several Koi forums as ‘Chag05’ came up with this video that demonstrates the moving block perfectly and I have his permission to put it onto the website – Les, thanks a million!

Experiment on water movement through filter. from chag05_Les on Vimeo.

Aside from Les’s choice of 70’s background music (and of course, that particular song was there for obvious reasons) the video shows off the theory perfectly without any media barriers or aeration – just the simple flow-pattern that’s achieved in all Eric units.

The idea behind it all is to pass that endless forward-moving block of water, aided by vertical turbulence, through these EricMat barriers along the travel.

Within Eric boxes and in this situation, I really do not know of any other media that can be anything quite like as biologically active!

The unit in question was an Eric Three, which holds only 84 gallons or 385 litres of water and it took 4.5 minutes for the entire 84 gallons of cloudy water to exit the box and be replaced with new water, which indicates that the water pump was operating at a 1,120gph flow-rate and this was also confirmed by Les.

I hope the video also demonstrates how quickly and easily the brush box and EricMat blocks can be removed and replaced to show the box below to be perfectly clean.

Waddy.

The water is absolutely crystal clear.

pH is perfect.

Nitrite is zero.

Ammonia is zero.

Dissolved Oxygen is 7.2.

The pond is heated.

The pond has two bottom drains.

The filter is gravity-fed.

Alas, despite these ‘perfect’ conditions the Koi inside the pond are not exactly perfect so perhaps it’s some kind of disease?

Well there is ‘shimi’ showing clearly on 50% of the Koi for starters.

Not to mention ‘hikui’ showing clearly on almost all the Go-Sanke.

Not true ‘diseases’ as such, but problems that are impossible to rectify once manifested and problems
that also make a once-attractive Koi now totally valueless.

The pond looks fine visually so let’s check out the filter stages.

Here is the mechanical stage of the filter, it is a proper vortex unit copied directly from my design back in ’85.

I say ‘proper’ because the outlet transferring water to the next stage is placed centrally at the top of the unit, which is the only place an outlet must go in circular units to ensure the gentle spin takes place. It is also correct that the bore of the exit tube is larger than the bore of the inlet pipes as transfer takes place by ‘head’ being almost on the surface of the unit.

However, the many copiers of my unit decided it was far too complex and far too costly to do all of this. So they simply linked them to the next stage with a surface overflow positioned at water level and called them a vortex when really it was only a round box.

You can see in this vortex the stainless steel coil heat exchanger that controls the pond water temperatures from a natural gas boiler.

As far as mechanical stages are concerned it looks clean enough – although there are better options available today, however this pond was ‘professionally’ installed some 15 years ago.

Moving on to the biological stage now.

This type of biological filter is still BY FAR the most popular choice of the vast majority of Koi keepers around the world today but to confuse the matter it goes under a huge number of completely different titles.

This one here is a two-chamber unit made from glass-fibre. It could be a single chamber or even a five-chamber unit if desired.

Others are single or multi-chamber versions made from concrete block, rendered and waterproofed and often referred to as ‘block-built’ when they could equally be made from polypropylene or even carved by hand from bedrock – there is absolutely no difference.

All of these are merely water containers and that’s all.

There are others made rectangular.

There are others that are circular.

Some are even made octagonal.

Some are supplied water from the pond by gravity whereby a water pump sucks water from the surface of the boxes and then pumps it back to the pond.

Others pump water from the pond below into them and the water then returns to the pond from the surface of the box by ‘overflow’.

Some are heavily aerated whilst some others are not.

There isn’t a scrap of difference in the actual operation of ANY of these boxes but the name that should be given to ALL these boxes (in order to save much confusion) is the accurate term of ‘Upward-Flow Boxes’ and this is simply because water enters around the base of the box and exits at the surface of the box.

Now back to the filter in question –

This shows the filter after the two chambers have been emptied after opening two 1.5” ball valves fitted to the sides at the base of both chambers.

The first chamber, which is supplied water from the vortex, is the one on the left.

There were two sacks of Flocor and one sack of Alfagrog but when these were removed the entire chamber was crammed with Japanese filter mat.

The second chamber to the right contained only Flocor and Alfagrog.

Note also that the transfer port dividing the two boxes also had filter mat to contact the water as it dropped from the surface of the first box to the base of the second box.

Next followed the removal of the media.

And stacking neatly it to be loaded onto the waste skip later.

This didn’t look exactly ‘good’ to me.

But this was only the tip of the iceberg.

The wisdom of wearing gloves cannot possibly be stressed too much in these situations.

Nice isn’t it?

It was estimated that some 10 gallons of this foul-smelling mess was removed before the box could be cleaned.

And here’s a perfect example of how NOT to use Japanese filter mat.

However, the next time you see forum posts that praise ‘block-built filters’ or others that urge innocents to ‘Get some Grog mate – you won’t regret it’! – You will also realise that these armchair filtration experts are shooting this sterling advice directly out of their own ar*es!

Please do not think even for one moment that this pond is an exception to the rule because it’s more likely the norm if the honest truth is known. And the honest truth is that ALL upward-flow boxes are out and out liabilities.

There are untold thousands of other similar ‘filtration time bombs’ in this world ready to go off at any time.

‘Perfect water readings’ mean even less than zero when the Koi have to face all this cr*p and the pollution it gives off – day in and day out!

And many STILL wonder as to why shimi and hikui completely wreck their Koi?

I’ll continue this in a couple of days because it’s FAR from over yet.

Waddy