Greetings from Orlando, Florida

Greetings from the home of Mickey Mouse. I have been wanting to build a laminar jumping water ever since I saw it at Disney World in EPCOT center. This is a great forum and have learned a lot about this. I hope everyone has great success with their project and don't forget to think outside the box.

Which brings me to my situation. I have been working on my project for about a month now. I have pictures and was going to bring in the camera to off load them but the ole brain just doesn't seem to spark like it used to. I'll try to remember when I get home or tomorrow. I have started out with a 4" but have noticed that everyone prefers 8". I'm trying to find some now that's not in 20ft sections. I have put together my nozzle according to how everyone is doing it here. I have used 3" pond filter - 2" space - straws (either coffee straws or drink straws) - 2" space - nozzle outlet (1/2" cut washer - that's all I can find). I am using a 1100gph pump. Also using a low bypass filter. All is connected with 3/4" clear tubing. After I plug in the pump, the low filter fills and then the nozzle fills. As the pressure in the nozzle grows I get perfect laminar flow BUT when it peaks out the stream becomes turbulant. Enough to create bubbles at the end. I just thought of this and wondered if the tubing is to small? Should I use 1" or bigger?

Any other ideas or suggestions?
Thanks a million,
Jeff

Hi there and welcome to the forum

This will be a quick reply as it is starting to get late here now.
Anyway, I use a 220mm in diameter tube.
4" is to small, the water will have high speed UP, and that is not what you want.

You want the water to have slow speed in the tube, if you have a fatter tube (8" or more) the water will travel at slower speed UP.
And then the water will have more changes to stay laminar...

Well that is MY theory anyway


Yes post your pictures here and share what you got
And we will help you out no matter problem there should be.

To post pictures:

1. get a cam

2. plug the cam in the USB

3. Download .jpg pictures to your computer

4, Register a FREE account at www.photobucket

5. Upload your photos to photobucket

6 CUT`n Paste the IMG link from photobucket into this forum... and voila


Cheers

Filip

Greetings!

For the 8" PVC, I recommend doing a google search for plumbing supply and plumbing wholesale places near you. I had the same problem where most places wanted to only sell it in 20' sections and the one who would sell it in 10' sections would charge $11-20 per foot! Then I finally found a place that sold it in 10' lengths at only $5 per foot! A total of $50 was a lot easier to swallow, plus I have spare for mess ups, testing, and for another fountain or two. So keep searching! I think it was the 14th or so place I called to ask about 8" diameter PVC.

As for the diameter or your pipe, your pump is to big for a 4" fountain. It should work if you had a smaller one. I have a 1250gph pump with an 8" fountain and even small changes can mess with the laminarity of my stream since I'm already fighting with the speed of the stream. I would guess you probably need to look at less than a 500gph pump with a 4" fountain (but since I haven't built a 4" I'm only guessing).

I think John has some brass nozzle rings if you want a better outlet. I bought mine from him and they work excellent!

Best of luck and post some pictures for us! The guys on this forum are incredibly helpful and don't let yourself get stuck/burnt out since we're all here to help!

I think it`s strange that you have to pay so much for your PVC pipes..

I did go to the local factory here that produce PCV, and they did cut me some tubes in different size that I can test
And I got ALL MY 4 8" tubes for free !!! including some other tubes that I could use for testing

Hey, as most people have already said your 4" nozzle is probably too small for that large of a stream. Essentially what you want is to have the water move as slowly as possible to the exit orifice. The larger the tube the slower the water will move to get there. A larger input should help, but I'm not sure how much. This goes along with the larger tube the slower the water will move. There are some improvements that can be made as mentioned by Ike. The cleaner, and sharper the exit orifice is the better the nozzle will perform. I do have some the brass nozzles left.