Siphons for Dummies

Siphoning a waterbed

Remember waist-length hair (on guys), paisley-print shirts and bell-bottom jeans? Yeah? Well, you're either a throwback millennial or someone who survived the sixties – either way, you probably have (or had) a waterbed. The two biggest problems with a waterbed are filling and emptying the thing, so it makes some sense that someone might come to the internet to learn how. We'd rather, however, that someone who knows how to empty a waterbed would answer them, as opposed to junk like "Siphoning a Waterbed"¹ at TheBump.com, posted by Alec Preble.

Because he has to (it was required at eHow.com before it was moved to TheBump), Alec explains that

"There are a couple of reasons you may need to siphon water from a waterbed mattress. You may have overfilled it during installation, need to move or dismantle the bed or repair or replace the mattress..."

...which more or less works for us. And Preble's probably right when he says that "most waterbed mattresses come with a fill and drain kit" -- though our experienced waterbed owners would say "all" instead of "most." Anyway, it's how you use the kit that counts, and Alec doesn't know how. Here's what he claims:

"It is not recommended that you skip the fill kit and try to suck the water out of the hose with your mouth; garden hoses contain germs, and siphoning with your mouth poses a drowning hazard."

"[A] drowning hazard"? Give us a break, Alec! If you know the science behind how siphoning works, you don't ever need to get water in your mouth -- but if you don't, well, perhaps you deserve to drown...

Anyway, Preble says to use your fill-and-drain kit and a garden hose, attaching the kit to a sink faucet. Then, according to Alec, you Turn the faucet on and listen for all the air to release from the hose. Leave the water running and set the fill-kit dial to the "Drain" setting. The water from the hose is diverted into the sink while creating a siphon that sucks the water from the mattress. Turn the faucet off when the desired amount of water has been siphoned from the bed. Detach the hoses and fill kit. Step four is easy if your kit has a dial (no one here at the AN has ever seen one like that). As for step five? Alec's scientific ignorance is showing (there's that BA in English at work again...): once the siphoning process has started, it will keep running even after you turn off the faucet, so you won't need to waste all that water. A couple of things Alec didn't mention?

• The bladder will never completely empty if the siphon outlet is above the bottom of the water bed (it'll never completely empty, anyway).
• The greater the elevation difference between the two ends of the hose, the faster the siphon runs.

Alec didn't know these things and ignored their mention in his one reference, probably because it referenced "gravity" and the potential for needing to understand science frightened him. For that, our boy Preble earns another Dumbass of the Day award.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   living.thebump.com/siphoning-waterbed-7065.html

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