Winter Pond Temps

[j.w]

Hey Mitch you can take a pan of boiling hot water and set it right where the heater is trying to make that hole in the water and when the hole is open put the heater back in there to keep it open. I would think once the hole is open the heater will work to keep it open right?

 

[callingcolleen1]

Mitch, that's too bad, but you let your pond freeze very hard, had you used a heater when very cold, you would still have open water. Your pond is very deep and big and wintering should work for you. Your pond has lots of thick ice now and so it will take time to melt. I like to plug heater in when needed to keep thick ice away and leave my pumps run. I have done this now for over 21 years and their where some cold years that I had to plug the pond in October to March. This year has been milder for me and I have only plugged the heater in much less.

Spring will come early for your pond if you leave a pump running and use heater when required to maintain an open hole. I was just outside and the snow melted off my large sedges and they are starting to turn green again. They come back very very quick when you leave pond running and will have much less stress when you can see the fish every day in the open water.

 

[MitchM]

jw, the problem is that the heater has melted out a basin shape and I am unable to tell where the ice has thinned out. I was able to take a cordless drill with a long auger bit and drill through the open area in the photograph to determine how much ice was left to melt, but I was still a good 3 feet from the heater. Even there I heard a crack as I inched closer. I would not be able to place a pot of hot water there safely. Besides, with 6 inches of water in the pool the pot of hot water would just float, unless it was a really big pot. That would add extra weight. If I fell through....
Emergency services are minimum 1 hour away, lol.

Colleen, I did start out with the heater just off my plant shelf into the deep water, but like I said before, the cord also warmed up and the heater just wound up being pulled closer to shore from the tension on the heater cord. The ice then thickened enough to cut off the warmed water from giving access to the deeper water for gas exchange.

Information for how to handle ponds in our climate had been hard to come across before I came across this site, and even then I see a big difference in our locations. Your yard Colleen, is fairly protected from wind with trees and the surrounding neighbourhood. The fact that it is south facing also helps give you warmer temperatures. You also have a smaller pond where a heater can make a noticeable difference. I have the maximum size heater, 1500W. The BTU`s to heat my pond like yours simply are not there.
My location is on top of a hill, we get a fair amount of wind here which creates a lot of evaporative cooling. I've been noticing that my temperatures are consistently cooler than yours.
The only way I can see keeping a hole open next year is to suspend an extension cord over open water and keep the heater going. I don`t like that idea because if we get any ice accumulation on the cord, it could result in a live wire falling into the pond.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes but I have seen much much colder winters down here, we just lucked out this year and got lots of Chinooks. I remember the very cold winters very well, minis 45 for weeks at a time. My ponds only had little tiny openings, and I had only the one 1500 watt heater to keep all three ponds open, and the bottom ponds had so much ice on it I could walk over it. The trick is to leave a pump running beside the heater so the pond water is heated more evenly. Have pump out into the deeper part of pond on a crate or something, with the hose running to the heater, this will circulate the water and heat the pond better. It can be done, just not very well with a bubblers here as our temperatures are just too cold. We are very windy here too, similar to Lethbridge, and I lose lots of water to evaporation as well, as I have posted before. I top my ponds up every week, run a hose out the window. We both have had a mild winter compared to what we both have seen. Neither of us has had the real cold yet, coldest I have seen so far is only minus 25c so, have not had the minus 40c yet like we have had in the past, and like I said, been doing this for many many seasons and remember some years it snowed the first of October and the snow never left till spring, and months of plugging the heater in non stop.

 

[j.w]

Think you need a bridge or dock out over your pond so you have access to where you need to put your heater. Bridges are nice to look at so there's an activity for you to get to come Springtime :razz:

 

[MitchM]

Gee thanks, jw...add to my list.... :razz:

Colleen, how many gallons do you think you have in your pond system

 

[callingcolleen1]

I did an accurate calculation on my winter thread, has all the dimentions and it is in fact over 3800 US gallons, but I round it off to 3500. If you look on my thread 'my pond runs all winter' I posted last week the size, shapes and depth of my ponds.

Mitch your pond looks really big and beautiful, mine is hard to see the whole ponds in one shot cause they run over some distance and there is lots of big sedges inside the ponds so you don't see all the ponds in one shot. All my ponds run together, the top pond pours into the middle pond, which pours into the bottom pond. I have the heater in the middle pond right where the water pours from the top pond, to evenly heat all three ponds. My ponds are easy to access cause I built the top edges above the ground, that way during a heavy remain, the ground water and dirt will not pour into my pond. The top two ponds are always at the same level, only the bottom pond shows the evaporation and water loss. I can walk all around the edge of the ponds on a path, and lean over the top edges and reach into the pond to access everything. I made it to resemble the creek, it is very long (over 40 inches in total length that snakes around) but no wider than 6 feet across.

If you shut down that pond in the winter, and don't drain it, it will take to June to melt all that ice! If you drain it that is a lot of water to refill, and then you suffer "new pond pond system each year. if you find a way to heat and run that pond all winter, spring will come much earlier and your hardy pond plants will bring back to life in March and April. You can have a real pond full of life like mine and not have to wait till June to enjoy.

JW has a good idea, you could make some sort of access bridgeto better help you reach into the middle.

 

[MitchM]

I would need two heaters to equal the heat that you're providing for your pond.
This coming summer I'll be putting in a waterfall, bog, rocks and plantings. I'll see if I can come up with a better answer for next winter.

 

[MitchM]

Good news, there is a 12`hole opened up under the heater to deeper water.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Well thank goodness and that is good news Mitch, that heater should keep an small area of your pond open, and that is more than enough, you don't need half the pond open like mine. Your big pond just needs some water circulation now, can you can get the bubbler going close by? That will help get rid of gases, hopefully everybody OK. Did you have lots of fish, what size is in there?

 

[MitchM]

No, the bubbler is frozen in place now. The 4 airlines that were supplying air are running through at least 3 feet of ice.
I wouldn`t want to get the bubbler going again by the heater because it will just dome over like before. See the picture I posted in post number 46
There are only 3 8`koi and 4 8`shubunkins in the pond.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Well if you only have a total of 7 fish in the big pond they may be OK.

 

[j.w]

Yay now that should do it for ya Mitch and keep that hole open till Spring. If it works than you have it made and won't have to do any fancy planning for next time. Darn we don't get to watch you build a bridge now :sad:

 

[MitchM]

That`s good because I would build the 20 foot bridge to span the pond and not have any way to lift it into place... :grumble:

 

[j.w]

Here is the answer to your problem, just build a dock out of these like this guy did!

How to build a floating dock using Heineken Mini Kegs.

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Step 1
Drink 96 Hieniken mini kegs and then get them to the location.

Step 2
Place mini kegs in pre built wood frame.

Step 3
Secure the Mini kegs.


We used some old fence line laying around and stapled it to the frame... We are redneck like that....

Step 4
Drag the soon to be dock out into the water.

Step 5
Flip it over and find a good place to secure it to land.


just drive a couple of steaks into the ground and secure the dock with some chain or whatever you can find laying around. We used some coaxil cable.... And there you have a floating dock.