GPH for Dummies?

I'm looking for an easy way to figure out gallons per hour for water flow coming out of my uv sterilizer into the tank. Is there a probe or machine you can hold where the return flow into the tank is located to get a measurement? My math is terrible and with all the valves and headloss from sump... I'm way lost!

Thanks!
Ryan

 

Well, you can do it the cheap way. What I did was on my return line, I rotated the line so that I can pour it into a bucket (instead of my DT) that has gallons marked on the side next to the DT. Then just use a stop watch and a calculator.

 

What's the formula?

 

If your figuring it per hour it would depend on how long you fill the bucket. 1 minute would be amount x 60.

30 seconds would be amount times 120.

so one and so forth.

 

3600 seconds in a hour/ how long it takes to fill a 5g bucket in seconds* 5g

so if it takes 15 seconds

3600/15=240

240*5=1200gph

 

Awesome! Thanks!

 

I did it the way Demonchild suggested. I'm guessing you're trying to keep your UV under 120 ish gph?

To give you a very rough estimate, mine took a little more than 3 minutes to fill a 5 gallon bucket, and that translated into about 100-105gph for me. That in theory should be good enough to kill parasites, however I have no way to determine if that's true. Though I've never gotten a break out of anything, so either I'm lucky or its working.