More Bog Construction Questions

[KDubU]

Okay I am hooked on the bog idea. A few questions for those who have one or have researched them.

1) What happens to the bog plants in winter in cold climates? I am assuming they die because there is no running water through the bog.

2) Related to #1, can one dig up bog plants and keep them indoors for winter?

3) Does anyone have pics of a water with a stream that flows into a bog and that flows into the pond? I am trying to draw out a plan to include a bog that would be beside the pond separated by a barrier of some form and the clean water flowing over into the pond.

Tks
Kyle

 

[mrsclem]

I turn off the pump to my bog in winter but the water stays in it, don't remove any plants. They freeze but come back each spring. Yes you could bring plants in but unless they are not hardy in your area, there is no reason to. Occasionally I will plant cannas and taro in my bog and as they are tropical, I pull the plants and let them dry and then store the roots in peat moss over the winter. The problem with a spring flowing into a bog is the water will just flow across the top. The water really needs to be pumped to the bottom and then flow up thru the gravel.

 

[Lisak1]

@mrsclem beat me to #1 & 2 - same here. Hardy plants stay in the bog and freeze, just like they do in the ground.

#3 is confusing. Do you mean an up flow bog with the water flowing over a barrier wall into the pond? @addy1 has a good example of that. My bog flows into the pond via the waterfall. But if you mean the water flowing over the bog and THEN into the pond, like @mrsclem said, you won't get the filtering action that is the purpose of the bog. That is how they work in nature, but in nature you would have acres of wetland for the water to flow through. In a bog you have just a few square feet of surface area.

 

[KDubU]

Thanks. Yes sorry was not totally clear on my description and you are both correct, I made an error thinking I could have the stream flow across the bog as I have read those are no where as efficient as the bottom up type. I will have to think on how to have the bog before the waterfall but wouldn’t that cause the flow over the falls to be almost a trickle? From what I understand of bogs is that the water slowly comes up from pipes in the bottom through the pea gravel and slowly seeps/pours over into the pond via various methods. I see this flow being very slow but I guess as long as it is constant, a waterfall would still work. I’m just trying to picture it all in my head so I can get it on paper this week. I want to start pond construction soon!

 

[addy1]

From what I understand of bogs is that the water slowly comes up from pipes in the bottom through the pea gravel and slowly seeps/pours over into the pond via various methods.

It can be a slow flow or a fast flow. Mine is huge, I pump around 6000 gph through the bog, it waterfalls back into the pond.

 

[Lisak1]

@addy1 beat me to it - you can have a slow trickle over a barrier like she has, or she could have restricted the flow to a much smaller outlets (or even multiple small outlets) and created a waterfall effect. It depends on what you're looking for. My much smaller bog (surface area is 4 feet by 6 feet) feeds my five foot waterfall because the outlet on the bog is less than a foot wide. In our case the bog flows into a small pool at the top of the waterfall where we've created yet more restriction to increase the volume of flow. Does that make sense?

 

[addy1]

The whole barrier gets a tickle of water over it, where the red arrow is, is the waterfall rock. The majority of the water flows out over the water fall rock, makes a nice waterfall. It is a flat rock around 3.5 feet wide, around............ We made that one part of the wall lower than the rest of the wall which makes a nice waterfall.

 

[Lisak1]

Perfect example!

 

[mrsclem]

I have a chimney flue liner as the spillway from my bog. Pumping 1600gph

 

[KDubU]

Yes thank you both, this makes sense. Likely mine will be a lot like yours @Lisak1 as while I have a lot of land, my wife does not want the pond to be too big and like nobody can do it as big as @addy1 .

 

[KDubU]

I have a chimney flue liner as the spillway from my bog. Pumping 1600gphView attachment 120766

Very cool! Would not ever have thought to use a flue liner.

 

[Lisak1]

We used a flue liner in our pond as a fish cave - simple solution and the fish love it! It develops a nice layer of algae quickly and it' s a flat surface for a water lily pot to rest on!

 

[GBBUDD]

The number one regret with ponds is they wish they had made it bigger

 

[Lisak1]

OK - my line drawing is more "here's a line, here's a box" but this illustrates the size of the outlet from the bog. The blue box is the bog area. Directly below the red line is the small pool where the water then feeds the waterfall.

 

[Bluerooster]

here's my bog when I first put it in. You can see where the spillway is.

Here it is working. The red denotes the spillway.

It's flowing just under 4000 gph.