The leaves are attacking!

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Guess I didn't get the leaves cleaned out of my pond well enough this year. We've had near-zero(F) degree weather the past couple days, and I noticed this morning that my pump had stopped. The heater kept things from freezing up inside the pond, but the pump lines back to the filter have frozen solid. I was able to get the pump spun up again, and it cleared out the rest of the debris in a couple minutes, but it wasn't able to push any warmer water through the lines to get things flowing again...

Fortunately we are expecting mid-40's again for a few days starting Thursday, so hopefully I can get the pump running again and keep my fish happy through the Winter. This is the first time I've had the pump unintentionally stop during cold weather, so now I'm trying to figure out how to rework the pipes next Summer to better protect against freezing.
 

DrCase

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Hope it gets warm enough to get you flowing...
When the water stops you got trouble
 
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Well, not much luck today. I tried putting the pump in a bucket of hot water and about 1/4 cup of aquarium salt, but its still too cold to make any progress. The forecast isn't looking much better for tomorrow, but Friday its supposed to reach 49 degrees... Crossing my fingers.

In the meantime, I had to get some water flowing again, so I grabbed some extra plastic water pipe. The pump was set up with 3/4" pipe when I got it, but last summer I made a 1" fitting for the pump (which feeds back into the 3/4" pipe, but it still got me a slightly better flow). Connecting the 1" pipe directly to the pump today, I discovered that the water simply will not flow out of the top pond fast enough, and it overflows. A quarter inch difference in pipe diameter nearly doubled the output from the pump. Wow! Can't wait to see what the flow looks like when I re-plumb this summer with 2" pipe and completely eliminate all restriction.
 

DrCase

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laugh.png
shdwdrgn . The larger pipe is giving you a better bang for your buck
 
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Well of course... and based on the research I did last year, 3/4" pipe is WAY too small for a 3000gph pump. It's just hard to really know what 3000gph means unless you can actually see it. Now that I have a better idea of the actual flow, I think I'm going to be very happy with the rebuilt pond, backed with a pair of laguna 2900's. Should give a real nice flow for the river portion.
 
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Only about half the pipe. I used a heat gun and hot towels on the exposed parts today, seemed like that much warmed up, but half the pipe is buried along the edge of the pond and not accessible. Since I have water flowing again, it should help heat up the ground and buried pipe, and the higher temperatures over the next few days will hopefully be enough. All I need is for it to melt slightly, just get a trickle of water flowing through, and it will melt out quickly from there.
 
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Well that went a lot worse than expected. Finally got the pipes cleared enough that I started getting a trickle of flow through the lines today, and had water flowing a few minutes later... That's when I discovered water running everywhere from underneath the rocks. Looks like the freeze burst my pipe somewhere in the buried section. So after all that effort, I ended up just pulling the fittings from the filter and hooking up a new piece of pipe for the winter. I can only hope that the constant flow of water will prevent this one (sitting above-ground) from freezing.
 

DrCase

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If you keep it moving you should be fine ..All my pipes are hidden but in the open , i have had problems in the past with power outages stopping my flow at the wrong time during freezing weather ,With no flow my pipes freeze.That shuts me down until it warms back up
 
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If you wrap the new pipe with a heater tape you will keep it from freezing. Just plug it in when it is going to be really cold and you will be all set.
 

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