Pond Waterfall Evaporation Advice

[nimblerobot]

Hello everyone, I acquired a house two years ago that has a very nice pond that was put in by the previous owner who did all the work . It was build to be a natural swim pond and has a dive deck, a live plant filterbed, a river with number of cool waterfall features and a bridge, and a smaller upper pond that the two water returns spill into. Its a decent amount of work to care for but when its running properly it looks really nice. We don't have any source of water other than city water so that is what has always been used to fill the pond.

The issue I have is that when the pumps are running and the stream is going the system loses a lots of water, however when I don't run the pumps the ponds lose none. When I say lots I mean that during the summer I have to fill it for 100 minutes on our city water every day to keep it full. I'm not sure how many gallons that works out to but its a lot, luckily we don't pay for water use. The pond requires less water on the shoulder seasons when its less hot out and also if I run only 1 pump instead of 2 it also loses less water.

I've spent many hours looking for where water might be escaping around the ponds, stream and falls and I can't find anything and I'd have to assume with water leaking at this rate I would be able to find something. My current theory is that the splashing from the river and the waterfalls is causing massive amounts of evaporation.

So here are my questions and thank you so much for any advice can you give:
1 - Do you think evaporation from stream and waterfall splashing could cause this much water loss?
2 - If #1 is true do you think the best plan of action to reduce water loss would be to simply remove the majority of the stream from the equation and put the water return much closer to the pond?? or does anyone have any other ideas on what I should do with this pond to massively reduce the water loss?

Thank you, the pond has been nice but is quickly become a sore spot on this property and I'm tempted to just remove it completely, especially since the pumps are needing to be replaced and I loathe spending money on a project that may never be fixed. When the pond is running well its a joy to have (except for the water loss) but when its not its a stinky mess

 

[fishlips]

That's more then 500 gallons/1900 liters a day! I don't have a lager stream or water fall but that's a crazy amount. if it's splashing out or leaking you could try a Soil Moisture Meter to find wet spots. If that is all evaporation I am changing my plans.

As for your pumps they are easy to repair. If the pump motor spins but is loud (grinding sound) it just needs new bearings. I find pumps and the dump replace the bearings and good as new. In fact I just bought some bearings for my lawn mower for less then 3$ each

you said "stinky mess" is there a smell or was that just a figure of speech?

 

[nimblerobot]

The pumps are these:

- Cal Pump Model T4000

The first pump designed for the pond enthusiast that is lightweight, water cooled, uses no oil and can be used in or out of water. Its high volume wat...

calpumpshop.com

- Cal Pump Model T7500

The Torpedo pump is the first pump designed for the pond enthusiast that is lightweight, water cooled, uses no oil and can be used in or out of water....

calpumpshop.com

The issue with the T7500 one is that when you power it up it buzzes but doesn't spin. I've opened it up as much as I can and there was some water inside the case where there shouldn't be. I'm hoping drying it out helps but I'd bet something on it is fried.

As far as the smell its not bad at all right now but if I leave the pumps off during the summer the pond turns green and fills with algae pretty quickly and it'll start to smell. What I was trying to get across was that I can't just leave the pond pumps off to reduce the water loss during the warmer months or it'll get pretty nasty. I gotta keep the pumps running when its hot and to do that I have to fix the water loss ... or it'll unfortunately need to be removed.

 

[nimblerobot]

The pumps are calpump torpedo pumps T4000 and T7500 which I think are pretty hard to work on. The issue with the T7500 one is that when you power it up it makes an electrical buzzing sound but doesn't spin. I've opened it up as much as I can and there was some water inside the case where there shouldn't be. I'm hoping drying it out helps but I'd bet something on it is fried.

As far as the smell its not bad at all right now but if I leave the pumps off during the summer the pond turns green and fills with algae pretty quickly and it'll start to smell. What I was trying to get across was that I can't just leave the pond pumps off to reduce the water loss during the warmer months or it'll get pretty nasty. I gotta keep the pumps running when its hot and to do that I have to fix the water loss ... or it'll unfortunately need to be removed.

 

[Tula]

I'm not an expert on pumps but once my pump made a weird sound but didn't spin, it was the impeller / propellor, which was an easy fix.

Your pond is beautiful and adds much beauty to your grounds. I hope the water loss source can be found.

 

[Jhn]

If you get no water loss when pumps are off, it isn’t in the main pond. It is Definitely not evaporation either that is way too much On a pond your size. Could be splash out from the waterfall, could be a leak in the plumbing to the waterfall, could be a low spot in the stream sides due to settlement over time or a plant growing and pushing the edge down, something shifting and Water wicking out and over the side of a fold, a puncture in the liner.

Since it’s the case that Turning off one of the pumps and the water loss lessens, I would first check the stream bed edges as the water could likely be escaping that way, it is going to require the removal of rocks around the edge of the pond not just walking around looking for a wet spot. It’s a process of elimination, the issue can be found it just requires patience, effort and time.

 

[Lisak1]

That's more then 500 gallons/1900 liters a day!

On my hose that would be more like 200 gallons... still a lot of water, but it would be worth testing the hose to see how much you're putting out a minute to be more accurate. Do you know how much water the whole system holds? Knowing the percentage of water loss would also be helpful. My pond is 4000 gallons - if I lose 1 percent per day that's almost 300 gallons a week, for example, which really isn't all that much. (Again - 300 gallons is A LOT of water, but not when you consider the total volume.) But if my pond were only 1000 gallons, that 300 gallons would represent a much higher percentage and be more concerning - does that make sense?

We pay dearly for city water where I live, so we are very much aware of how much goes in the pond. That's one reason we built underground water storage, so we could capture rainwater. We also have our sump pump feeding the pond for much of the year - more free water!

If I weren't paying for water I'd just put an autofill on the system and not worry about it. The water isn't really "lost" if it's going into the ground or the atmosphere. It's just going back into the water cycle. However, you could certainly reduce the issue if you removed the streams like you said and had the water simply recirculating in the pond.

 

[fishlips]

Its hard to find any thing about repairing that pump online. Water inside is obviously a bad seal.

Dose it spin free by hand turning? If it spins free it might have a bad capacitor (no all have one). If it locked tight or hard to spin might be bearings, wet seal or damaged impeller.

If its broke now what harm can be done by pulling it more apart.

 

[nimblerobot]

Thanks for the help everyone. I've definitely tried pulling rocks up to see the liner all the way around but I haven't had any luck finding a spill over. It could be a hole somewhere. With that amount of water loss every day I'd have to see a wet spot somewhere I think.

I think the splashing of the waterfalls greatly increases the evaporation. Every droplet that lands on a rock dries up pretty quickly. I've had a pond specialist tell me that's too much water loss for evaporation, and Ive also had people tell me they've seen similar issues with their waterfalls and they never found a leak.

I'm no expert but I think the waterfalls in this case are used for part of the water oxygenating/cleaning process so it's possible removing them would also harm the ecosystem to some degree. If that's true then this water loss might just be a requirement to keep the system healthy. I'll go do some estimations on the size of the system today and how much water our fill hose puts out.

 

[j.w]

@nimblerobot

 

[nimblerobot]

My water fill rate turns out to be 5 gallons/minute or 300 gallons/hr. For 100 minutes of fill time we'd be looking at 500 gallons of water lost per day.

Estimating the size of all the ponds and waterways in the system together the total is about 15000 gallons.

So we're losing about 1/30th or 3.3% of the water per day during the hot months. Seems like an awful lot but its hard to say how much the system can be improved... I suppose one thing I could try is redirecting the water from the top through a pipe directly back into the pond and just eliminate the waterfalls altogether to see if that fixes things.

Dose it spin free by hand turning?

Yes the pump spins freely by hand so i'm pretty sure you're right about the capacitor or something else electrical. Its dried out now and still not functional. Here's a image of the insides as far as I could get it open... The metal casing appears to be completely sealed.

 

[nimblerobot]

Hmm this capacitor doesn't look too healthy Glad I found something obvious to fix!

 

[fishlips]

I hope the water didn't do any other damage. Did you find how the water got in?

 

[nimblerobot]

I hope the water didn't do any other damage. Did you find how the water got in?

I think the inside was sealed up pretty well so my best guess is through the cord entry. Once I get it back together I'll make sure to add some silicone there and double check the seals.