The Intake bay the only choice for a pond with lots of trees
- Thread starter GBBUDD
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Now that the leaves have started to fall, I am realizing my intake bay works better than I thought it did. Not every leaf gets pulled in but soooo many do. I'm glad I situated it right near the back door because I've been out there scooping leaves several times a day!
It started more as a way to catch the fish , specifically the babies that i get every year. But it has proved to be a huge benefit when it comes to the leaves ohhhhhhh the leaves from my giant maple and others.
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YShahar
Enthusiastic duct-tape engineer
Definitely an intake bay is a must have! I don't have as many leaves as you have, but the trees around the pond are mostly citrus trees, which drop their leaves throughout the year. I also see a lot of little "islands" of algae floating in the intake bay at the end of the day. It's super easy to just net out the algae and leaves once a day.
I will do an update today.
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Our one big maple right by the pond nicely died. Now it is a perch fir the hawks, herons, birds.
The leaves mainly blew away from the ponds, our woods are all down wind from the ponds.
The leaves mainly blew away from the ponds, our woods are all down wind from the ponds.
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Fighting this now. Got the new intake in but looking for a way to create that surface tension.
Right now, the wind oddly is blowing the other direction and those leaves are like little sail boats. The intake bay just can't pull them in before the wind takes them to the far side. When the wind switches, hopefully soon, they go near the opening and get sucked in.
I can't do anything permanent to create that surface tension which I think will help dramatically, pull in the leaves that circulate by. I use my pond for irrigation (holds my rain water) and the level can drop a lot before we get more rain.
So this past weekend I was trying to figure out a weir door design that would work with the water level. I tried just a piece of liner but just doesn't stay up enough to create tension.
So I came up with a design last night and going to try today at some point since it is the last 70 degree day in the foreseeable future.
I know the tension is the key and if I sit and hold the liner just at the wayer level, you can see the leaves a few feet away start drifting to the intake bay. For those windy days where the wind isn't coming to the intake bay, I may add an aux pump with 2 jets to help swirl the top layer of water that way. If I turn on my irrigation pump and let it feed back into the pond (by design if it creates too much pressure), it swirls the leafs over that way. Just need one more push half way to the intake bay for those really windy days.
I've noticed leaves don't take long to sink, so once one hits, its a race to get it over to the intake bay! But all and all, it looks promising if I can get the tension at the opening (and adjustable to match water level).
Right now, the wind oddly is blowing the other direction and those leaves are like little sail boats. The intake bay just can't pull them in before the wind takes them to the far side. When the wind switches, hopefully soon, they go near the opening and get sucked in.
I can't do anything permanent to create that surface tension which I think will help dramatically, pull in the leaves that circulate by. I use my pond for irrigation (holds my rain water) and the level can drop a lot before we get more rain.
So this past weekend I was trying to figure out a weir door design that would work with the water level. I tried just a piece of liner but just doesn't stay up enough to create tension.
So I came up with a design last night and going to try today at some point since it is the last 70 degree day in the foreseeable future.
I know the tension is the key and if I sit and hold the liner just at the wayer level, you can see the leaves a few feet away start drifting to the intake bay. For those windy days where the wind isn't coming to the intake bay, I may add an aux pump with 2 jets to help swirl the top layer of water that way. If I turn on my irrigation pump and let it feed back into the pond (by design if it creates too much pressure), it swirls the leafs over that way. Just need one more push half way to the intake bay for those really windy days.
I've noticed leaves don't take long to sink, so once one hits, its a race to get it over to the intake bay! But all and all, it looks promising if I can get the tension at the opening (and adjustable to match water level).
@Wildneg - I had a similar issue. My weir wall is solid up to a point, but then I built it up a little higher with rocks. I could see water flowing in to get to the pump on the other side of the intake bay and I had a feeling some water was pulling between the rocks, too. As an experiment, I covered the lid of the pump vault with a scrap of liner and I used another scrap of liner flopped over the top of the weir wall. The rubber basically covers over the gaps where water was flowing in. It isn't a complete seal, but I think it has helped with the pulling action. Just something to consider as you work on your solution. Good luck!
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I spent a lot of time thinking about how to build a floating weir for exactly this scenario. Never built it because I ended up going with a negative edge, but the design I can up with was to build the intake bay with no weir at all. Just run the liner straight through.
Then a scrap piece of liner would be adhered to the bottom of the intake bay entrance—wide enough to block the entire opening and tall enough to be above water at the highest water level + enough length to form a loop. The loop at the top of the liner would be taped/glued/whatever and filled with cork or other suitable floating material. Finally, weight would be added to the loop along with the cork until the top of the weir floated just below the surface of the water.
That's the rough idea. I imagine it would need some refinement to actually be effective. Might need a dowel to stiffen the loop. That would also double as buoyancy. Might also need to figure out how to keep too much water from coming in through the sides, perhaps building some kind of channel on each side of the weir to hold it in place while still allowing it to rise and fall smoothly with water level.
Then a scrap piece of liner would be adhered to the bottom of the intake bay entrance—wide enough to block the entire opening and tall enough to be above water at the highest water level + enough length to form a loop. The loop at the top of the liner would be taped/glued/whatever and filled with cork or other suitable floating material. Finally, weight would be added to the loop along with the cork until the top of the weir floated just below the surface of the water.
That's the rough idea. I imagine it would need some refinement to actually be effective. Might need a dowel to stiffen the loop. That would also double as buoyancy. Might also need to figure out how to keep too much water from coming in through the sides, perhaps building some kind of channel on each side of the weir to hold it in place while still allowing it to rise and fall smoothly with water level.
YShahar
Enthusiastic duct-tape engineer
If you have some flat rocks, you may be able to simply make the intake "corridor" more shallow when the water level is high, and then take them out again when it's low. Obviously, choking down the opening on the sides would also help, and that doesn't depend on water level.
But yes, the wind direction is definitely going to be an issue. In our area, the wind is almost always from the West (or northwest or southwest). If it's blowing from the east, we're in trouble; that's the time to start closing windows and even taping up gaps around windows and doors, because it means a sandstorm is soon to follow. So the only place to create an intake bay was at the far eastern end of the pond. But if you have variable winds, you may be able to use jets to push the water (and any leaves that sink a bit below the surface) toward your intake bay.
The intake bay is on the due west side of the pond. I do have two return jets in the pond that pushes the pond surface and the leaves toward that general direction of the opening to the intake.
Yes the opening was made shallower for the fall, But i also have a negative edge at the end of the intake bay. and I learned that when the negative edge was blocked at the surface even though the intake bay opening is 15 feet away it too cut down the surface pull. One reason why the intake was full everywhere but at the negative edge the leaves got pulled under the log i have across the area to help keep the leaves from dropping into the pump pool or cistern.
This way as @Wildneg mentioned the leaves sink if i don't get to them soon enough as my intake really only has draw on the surface at the in and the out of the intake bay . This makes it easy to round up the leaves in the shallowest part of the pond
Yes the opening was made shallower for the fall, But i also have a negative edge at the end of the intake bay. and I learned that when the negative edge was blocked at the surface even though the intake bay opening is 15 feet away it too cut down the surface pull. One reason why the intake was full everywhere but at the negative edge the leaves got pulled under the log i have across the area to help keep the leaves from dropping into the pump pool or cistern.
This way as @Wildneg mentioned the leaves sink if i don't get to them soon enough as my intake really only has draw on the surface at the in and the out of the intake bay . This makes it easy to round up the leaves in the shallowest part of the pond