Why is my overflow gargling???

I went probably 5 days without any problems with my overflow box and now all of a sudden it's making this annoying gargling sound and keeps taking in huge air bubbles which then get flushed down to my fuge. I upgraded the return pump to increase the flow but that hasn't seemed to help at all. It's a CPR overflow box and I have the aqualifter pump that goes along with it. Any ideas as to why my overflow keeps sucking in air bubbles? Do I just need a larger return pump?

 

you might have a foriegn body in the pipework somewhere?

I know of cases where after trying to solve a problem of this nature, people have taken their plumbing apart and found a deads snail (died from being trapped in the pipe)

Steve

 

I checked and there's nothing in the lines.

 

If your return flow is greater than the flow out it will gurgle.

 

Well I tried reducing the flow but that didn't help at all. Will it gurgle if there's not enough flow. That was one of the troubleshooting things in the overflow instructions. It said not enough return flow could make it pull sound like a drain and gurgle.

 

Hard to say, when mine does it I have always been able to fix it by slowing the return. You do have to bring it down quite a bit at times.

 

Alright, I'll give that a try again and see what I can get.

 

Just a quick question, when calculating how much head a pump is going against, is it just vertical height, or lateral height as well? My return line is kind of weird, it goes up about 8 in, then lateral for 12in, down for about 6, and then back up to the tank around 4ft up. More of an S-shaped path.

 

Up, lateral and elbows, you have about 5 to 5.5 foot of head.

 

If you have a lot of elbows in your overflow lines then the water will be moving slower and contributing to air in the lines.