Waterfalls and winter

awesome we love pictures! with a big pump like yours, i'm betting you'll have a rather nice winter waterfall.

yes we all need to watch the weater..my pond temp is 42 yesterdays air temp was 60 today its 26 sleet ,snow ,,,buy wedneday it should be 60 again

had to turn the pond off this morning...temp last nite was 14deg and was only going to get in the upper 20s today ..turned the pump off and drained the filters..the ice was building fast

What a lot of people don't know is that water is the only liquid that expands when it freezes. It has to do with the 104 degree bond of the Hydrogen molecules to the Oxygen. So your filters, as DrCase has indicated, need to be drained if the temperature drops low enough to freeze the system.

Good Point DrDave!! if you do let your filter freeze ,it could take a while to melt that giant ice cube. i hope to start my pond back up later today,,,warm weather is comming..

Well, here in Indiana I have had my pump running all winter. It had done fine until this past week when the pump got really clogged from the muck(the stuff the filters take care of during spring, summer and fall)and burned up. My neighbor also has been running his waterfall with no problems (i think he has a much better pump than I did). So I guess it just depends on your entire setup and equipment quality. I have since learned my lesson and am now in the market for a true quality pump. The pond also has yet to entirely freeze over.

I hate to resurrect this old topic again..but my husband and I were talkign about running the fall all winter again.. mainly because the pond is done and it looks awesome, and I was just imagining it with snow all around and a broken pond surface looking very pretty..

Anyways, I have two main concerns.. The tube that goes from the pump to the top of the fall.. THAT can freeze and clog the output..

the other is, even though i do not thing any amount of ice will cause water to spill out of the pond (we really took a LOAD of precautions about this when building) IT COULD expand the rocks and when it melts, dislodge a LOT Of my hard done work!!!

Most of the rocks are glued in place, but not all.. i would hate to loose my fall because of expanding water.

Before I put in my 365 gallon pond last fall, I took into consideration should I install a waterfall (water Spill), or not. At first I didn't have the water fall installed and run the pond without the water fall.

After deciding to go ahead and install the water fall during the winter months. I found that by having water heater inside my filter seservor I could keep the water fall running all year round without have to worry about anything freezing up and loosing my water pump for the pond.

Of course the problem this created was rapid water evaporation and the problem of checking my water level every day. I would imagine heating a really large pond would create an even greater problem with keeping up with refilling a pond.

I'm thinking that if one was to have a heater in a large pond, they would need to install a water fill float that would automatically add water to the pond as the water evaporated. Now we are talking about plumbing water from the house all the way to your pond.

I would think that in the long run, it would be worth it.

well, the autofill wouldn't be too hard.. I dont know if you have seem pictures, but my watering hose is RIGHT over the pond.. no plumbing needed.. i just never installed a "float automatic filler" But the heater in the TOP of the fall is a GREAT idea