Once you have the style of the pond in mind and
hopefully down on paper you can
then determine how you are going to install the equipment and run the
plumbing. Before you can do this, however, you need to know what
equipment you are installing.
The
Pump
The Pump is truly the heart of the
pond. It circulates life-giving water and keeps the pond from
becoming stagnant like a swamp. The pump also runs the show so to
speak. It pushes the water through the filtering equipment and
creates the waterfall and/or fountains. It is the life of the pond
and it's one of the most important pieces of equipment you can purchase.
What Size Pump Do
You Need?
The rule to follow when you are
building ponds of the sizes on which we're focusing (up to 2000 gallons)
is that you want to circulate the water at least once an hour.
That means, right off the bat, if your pond is 2000 gallons you need a
pump that will circulate 2000 gph (gallons per hour). BUT - there
are other factors to consider.
How lively do you want your water?
Pee Boys only require 140 gph (and should not be the only water return
method for ponds because it won't give your pond enough aeration) and
water fountains that spray water up from the center of the pond take
about 500 to 1000 gph for a nice display - but the waterfall can take up
to 4000 gph if it's a couple of feet wide. If your waterfall is
higher than 10 feet and about 2 feet wide or wider you will need the
pumping power of a 4000 gph pump. You will lose gph with every
foot you force the water UP. This is called loss of head pressure.
The wider the water fall is the more water you need to cover it.
Small ponds (less than 1000 gallons)
need only about 1200 gph or less if the waterfall isn't more than a foot
wide or very high. Many waterfalls do fine with 2500 to 3000 gph.
If your waterfall is only a foot wide and doesn't have to go UP more
than a couple of feet or so 2500 gph will give you a white water type of
movement. 1500 gph will give you a quiet bubbly effect.
When in doubt go up to the next size
pump. You can always valve the gph down if needed and there is
generally only a matter of $20 or so difference in price.
Our Pond Project:
The waterfall will be 3 to 4 feet in
height and about 2 feet wide. I want a lot of splash so I'm going
with a pump that can give me 3500 gph. In fact, I've chosen Cal
Pump's PW3500 for $209.95. Click
HERE to see the pump we chose.
Homework:
Choose your pump. Click
HERE to go to the pump page of Pond Doc's Online Water Garden
Center's Catalog.
Placement of the
Pump
The best place in the pond to locate
your submersible pump is as far away from the water return as possible.
This will create flow throughout the whole pond so no areas are left
uncirculated and become stagnant. You'll want this location to be
the deepest end of the pond. It will basically sit on the bottom
of the pond.
Pump
Considerations
The submersible pumps that are used
for economy ponds require only regular 115 v household
electricity. They have the normal 3-prong plugs. Most come
with a 12 foot cord but some, like the Cal Stainless Steel, has 20 feet.
Where are you going to plug in the pump? You need an electrical
outlet close enough to where the pump will be located so the cord can
reach it or you will need a heavy-duty extension cord rated for outdoor
use.
Another consideration you have with
submersible pumps is how you are going to protect your pump's impeller
from large pieces of debris and stop it from clogging up constantly.
Fish can be sucked up into the pump's intake so you need something that
will prevent anything larger than dirt from going into the pump.
What you need is called a pre-filter. Some pumps, such as Cal's
Stainless Steel and PondMaster's Mag Drives, have optional pre-filters
that you can order. Utility style pumps, like Cal's PW series has
small opening on the bottom of the pump that act as a screen.
Usually no pre-filter is necessary unless you just want to keep the tail
fins of the fish from getting near the pump. You can use a basket
of sorts to set the pump in so long as water can easily flow into the
bottom intake.
Helpful Hint: Don't
waste your money on foam covers for any pre-filter for submersible
pumps. They clog constantly and actually get in the way of
properly filtering your pond. Use only screens and pull off any
foam covers or filter pads so fine debris can travel through the pump
and get filtered out externally by your biological / mechanical filter.
Our Pond Project:
The nearest electrical outlet is on
the exterior wall of the house on the patio. It's too far from the
pond for the 12-foot cord of our Cal Waterfall Pump to reach so we have
to purchase a heavy-duty outdoor extension cord with several outlets.
This adds $12.95 to our expenses.
The
Filter
The Filter on a pond serves two
purposes. It serves as a mechanical filter (removing dirt from the
pond) and serves as a biological filter (providing the proper
environment for the development of nitrifying bacteria). If you
are building a Water Garden that has NO fish you can by-pass this piece
of equipment - but - you may want to filter your pond anyway - to keep
the water garden clean.
If you are planning to have even the
first fish --- do NOT treat this piece of pond equipment as an option.
Some (un-enlightened) individuals say
that you don't need a filter on your pond - even if you have fish.
If you stumble across a website that makes this claim - stumble on past
it and leave it alone. Never go back! These people are
crazy! Okay - I'll agree with them. You don't need a filter
unless you don't mind dead fish floating around - how's that?
What Type Filter
Do You Need?
First rule of choosing a filter -
don't go with a submerged one. They just don't do a good job of
filtering and they are so aggravating and hard to deal with! Most
of them are no more than glorified pre-filters anyway. Common
sense states that if you want to clean the water you need to REMOVE the
dirt - not leave it in the water.
With that said - let's explore the
different kinds of filters that can be used. Bead filters are just
too expensive for our economy pond. Yes. A bead filter is
THE KING of low-maintenance mechanical filtration but we are watching
our budget closely on this project and we are going to sacrifice a bit
on the low-maintenance side for a less expensive option.
Gravity filters are boxes that are
installed at the waterfall or side of the pond and water falls out of
them into the pond via gravity. They are filled with various types
of filtering media (ie. pads, brushes, bio-balls, etc.) and filter the
water as the water gently passes through them. They are cumbersome
to maintain. You have to remove the material and clean it.
Too much work for me! Plus - although they are not usually as
expensive as bead filters - they aren't cheap. A bio-falls style
waterfall unit is a type of gravity filter that cost a lot but have even
less filtering ability. I think we'll pass on the gravity style
filters...
Ah - finally. A filter that is
not too expensive yet offers decent mechanical and biological filtering
(if sized correctly) and isn't too hard to maintain. The external
pressurized filters should serve our purposes quite well. There
are several brands of this style filter on the market. Some tend
to last a little longer than others and some have backwash features that
prevent you from having to take out the filtering materials inside when
cleaning. This is the low-maintenance feature that we like.
What Size Filter
Should I Put on My Pond?
We spend a lot of time and space on
our websites explaining the statement "labels lie" when it comes to pond
equipment. Filters rank right up there with UV's as the worst
offenders. Glorified pre-filters are labeled as biological
filters. A package of two thin pads in a waterfall box is called
the "filter that never needs cleaning" - (which, by the way, means that
if a filter doesn't filter out anything of course it never needs
cleaning) - and the label on a 12" round canister with three little
round spongy filter pads will claim that it will "filter up to 1000
gallons" is just - well - again - how do I say this - BULL.
If a filter is sized too small what
you will experience is having to clean the filter pads or other media
every time you even look at the pond. Who needs that?! Plus
it won't be significant enough to be able to handle the biological end
of the filter equation. So what is a pond owner to do?
Listen to us. That's what.
Basically take whatever the
manufacturer says and cut it in half. If the manufacturer claims
that his (or her) product will filter ponds up to 1000 gallons you
automatically assume that it will do a decent filtering job on ponds of
500 gallons max. The only exception to this rule is, of course,
the ProBead and SuperPro filters that we manufacture ourselves because
we aren't going to over-rate our product's abilities out of GP (general
principal).
Now that I've aired my aggravation
about the labels on pond products let me also tell you that unless we
state that "the manufacturer says" we will give you the skinny on what
the filter (or other piece of equipment) will in all reality do.
Our Pond Project:
We like the backwash abilities of the
TetraPond Pressurized Filter and that will go a long way with keeping
our economy pond project as low-maintenance as possible for the money.
Our project pond will be a little less than 1900 gallons and a TetraPond
2500 model would probably do okay but since we are almost at 2000
gallons and the difference in cost is only $40 we thought we'd go with
the next size up. Our choice of filter for our economy pond
project is the TetraPond 4000 for $239.95. Click
HERE
to see our choice.
Homework:
Choose your filter. Click
HERE
to go to the filter page of Pond Doc's Online Water Garden Center's
Catalog.
Placement of the
Filter
The filter can go basically wherever
you want it to go as long as you have the pumping power to get the water
there and back. The filter, itself, does not need a plug outlet
nearby because the pump is the part that pushes the water through the
filter. If a filter has a UV add-on you would need to plug in the
UV.
Many filters can be buried up to
their necks so they virtually disappear into the landscape.
Perhaps the most common place for the filter is just behind the
waterfall. The height of the waterfall tends to hide equipment
plus it's right in line with the plumbing. You can easily tap into
the hose before it goes to the waterfall.
Filter
Considerations
Gravity filters and pressurized
filters can only take so much water flow. Gravity filters will
overflow if more water is being pumped into the filter than leaving the
filter and the pressurized filter will literally blow its top and/or
leak if too much water pressure builds up inside it. Each filter
should be labelled with a maximum flow rate.
We don't want to dictate how much
water flow we can have in our waterfall by the limitations of the filter
so whenever we are pumping more water than the filter can take we
can simply put the filter on a by-pass so that only a portion of the
water goes through. Not only will this prevent overflow and
leaking or bursting it will actually give us a better filtering job.
If pond water goes through the filter too fast the solids do not get
filtered out as well. Too much pressure will literally wash the
organics out of the filter while you are filtering the water and it all
will end up right back in the pond where it doesn't belong.
By-passes are rather easy to install.
You'll need at least 1 tee and a valve to control the flow. We'll
get more into the details of the by-pass once we design our system.
Our Pond Project:
Our filter is a pressurized filter
and our pump will give us too much flow for the filter to handle.
We will need to construct a by-pass just before the filter. Our
filter can be buried and we'll locate it behind the waterfall.
The
Ultraviolet Water Sterilizer
If you do not plan to add a UV Light
to your pond just skip down to the bottom of the page.
An ultraviolet water clarifier (also
called UV Light or Sterilizer) is a tube with 2 ports that pond water
runs through. The water is subjected to high-intensity ultraviolet
rays while inside the tube which sterilizes the algae spores in the
water so that they cannot reproduce. What you end up with is clear
water.
What Type of
Ultraviolet Water Sterilizer
Do You Need?
There aren't many "types" of UVs.
Just ones that go on the outside of the pond and ones that can be
submerged. There are very few, if any, submersible UVs that will
clear 1800 gallons well so for the larger of our economy ponds the
external UV Lights will do fine. Actually the external UVs give
you much better results anyway.
What Size UV
Should I Put on My Pond?
Once again - "labels lie" when it comes to pond
equipment. A manufacturer may state that his 8 watt UV will clear
up 2000 gallons. Through experience we know better. An
undersized UV will mean basically that you have wasted your money.
The results should be clear water, not pond water that is hazy or with a
green tint. Once again, if you want to know the size you need for
your pond just -- listen to us.
Unless we state on the description of
the UV that "the manufacturer says" we will list what we know the UV
will do. Sometimes we'll list both ratings on a UV. We tend
to be very conservative because we don't want you to get a UV home that
won't work for you so if you are borderline with the number of gallons
you can stretch it just a bit.
Our Pond Project:
Our project pond is less than 1900
gallons. We like Emperor Aquatics Smart UVs for ponds in the size
ranges of our economy ponds for many reasons. We have chosen
Emperor Aquatics' 40 watt Smart UV because POND DOC rates it at 1700
gallons in the sun and 1900 in the shade and I know that it's a
conservative figure. The 40 watt Smart UV should work very well
for us.
Smart UVs are available already
equipped with the adaptors and connectors we'll need to fit on our
system. All I need to do now is find out exactly what size and
type of hose we'll be using so that we can choose the one with the
correct fittings. Click
HERE
to see Emperor Aquatics' Smart Ultraviolet Water Sterilizers.
Homework:
Choose your UV. Click
HERE
to go to the UV page of Pond Doc's Online Water Garden Center's
Catalog.
Placement of the
UV
Whenever possible locate your UV in
line right after the filter. You can't do this on gravity filters
so you would need to place the UV in line before the filter in that
case. Do NOT bury the UV. You can cover it with a light
cover of bark or pine straw and you can hide it in the bushes but do NOT
bury it. That will void your warranty. Do not lay the
transformer (power supply) in any area where water stands after a rain.
You will need electricity nearby.
UVs use regular 115 v household current. Most of them have long
cords (of about 20 feet) but an extension cord may be necessary.
Again, use one rated for heavy-duty outdoor use.
Ultraviolet Water
Sterilizer
Considerations
If water passes through the UV too
fast the UV won't work. Each model of UV Light will state a
maximum flow rate. Just like with the filter - we don't want our
water flow dictated by the UV so if the pump sends the water through too
fast for the UV to be effective you'll need to place the UV on a
by-pass. If you already have to put the filter on a by-pass you
can put the UV on the same by-pass.
By-passes are rather easy to install.
You'll need at least 1 tee and a valve to control the flow. We'll
get more into the details of the by-pass once we design our system.
- Design the Pumping and Filtering System
Now that you've chosen the main pieces of
equipment you will need to actually put down on paper the design of how
the parts will all fit together.
Click
HERE to continue with
Step 2 of our Economy Pond Building Course where we will design the
plumbing system and get a detailed list of adaptors, hose, valves and
other hardware that we'll need to make them fit together.
