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Sk8r
03/07/2015, 11:29 AM
Acrylic sump. Tough, drillable.
Use a hole saw bit. Cuts a neat and accurate hole in plastic.

Attach a bulkhead connector. If your Lowe's hardware is like mine, nobody knows what a bulkhead connector is. You may have to order it from your lfs or get it online. This consists of 2 parts and a soft piece of rubber. The part that goes inside the tank has external screw threads that ---yes!---can take a screw-on cap. Buy this at the same time. This will let you detach the sump if you have to do maintenance.

The exterior side of the connector has a screw thread, too. Get a two-ended connector that can bridge between your pump AND that bulkhead connector. This means if you ever have to service your pump, you can simply cap the inside of the bulkhead connector, then unscrew the intermediate connection between your exterior pump and the exterior bulkhead connector part, and service your pump mostly dry and assured you don't have to take your sump fuge apart. And you tighten that only barehanded and only as much as you need to: do NOT crack the acrylic! A new bulkhead may weep for a couple of weeks, but should settle down and not leak.

This is my job today: got a pump not delivering what it should, and I'm needing to pull it, clean it, replace it, and I will NOT be elbow deep in water doing it.

I also use a simple shutoff valve between my pump and the tank, so I can regulate the flow from the pump, which can deliver 2336 gallons an hour of flow.

I'll open up the impeller of the return pump and make sure a snail isn't in it. ;) Wish me luck. I HOPE that's the case, and not that it's going to take a new pump.