Thoughts on leaving pumps in pond during winter?

[MitchM]

If I DON'T run the pump I'd have a solid block of ice. Last winter was one of the worst for the pond we stayed single digits for 10 days and the warm up was slow. I think at one point it was 70% frozen. I was concerned about my fish and hardware but we made it thru.View attachment 85885 View attachment 85885 View attachment 85886 View attachment 85887

Do you dye your pond water? It looks quite blue.
Also, it looks like the ice broke and caved in, or did you chop a hole open?

 

[Tula]

I leave my pumps in the pond. I have a pressurized canister filter, so can't leave it out and running, as it'll freeze / split. The other pump goes to my water fall, but I fear the drop is too far, plus worry about ice damns.

 

[Dave 54]

Well, I'm "norther" than you - zone 5A/B - and run the pump all winter. Although obviously much depends on your pond design, cold is not necessarily the determining factor.

Agreed we are quite far notherly as our Island goes we do get temperatures as low at -15c by carefullly thinking everything through we decided on insulation as previously stated which works well as a back up in our filter housing if push comes to shove we do have a back up weapon in that we have an oil heated radiator at a lower wattage rating than the 1KWatt at only 850 watts , I dont know if you have come across them before, they work by the oil being heated to whatever you set the timer too once heated thy then switch off leaving the oil to keep the heat at another set time the radiator will then switch back on again .
It works by heatingthe air around the filter housing and the policarbonate roofing sheets reflects the heat back down into the filter housing .
Weve found that at the lowest temperatures when the pond dips to its lowest temperature that we can boost the water temperature by 1 or 2c .
The policarbonate roofing sheets over the pond help keep this heat in the pond boosting the temperature to 9c .

Dave

 

[Jersey_Marine]

Well, I'm "norther" than you - zone 5A/B - and run the pump all winter. Although obviously much depends on your pond design, cold is not necessarily the determining factor.

You can't have a 6ft waterfall or a pond filter running all winter. The biofalls would freeze and crack and the pond filter would freeze and crack. I will be running 2 other pumps for aeration either submersible or external. Not sure what Im going to do yet.

 

[peter hillman]

Do you dye your pond water? It looks quite blue.
Also, it looks like the ice broke and caved in, or did you chop a hole open?

I do dye, I use black and it usually needs to be replenished every few weeks. If I don't, algae shows up around the edges pretty quick and the fish seem to like the sense of protection it gives, 'can't see you can't see me'.
I kept my pump running with just the output going straight up from the filter box to ripple the surface and prevent the surface from freezing over. The hole you see is from the pump shooting water up into the air, (if you look close you can see the droplets in the air) because as the ice grew the water level dropped until the output was exposed. 1050 gph shooting in the frozen air and the droplets just adding to the ice getting worse by the hr at night and barley thawing during the day. Normally COLD for us is 18-20*F, it hovered around 6-7* for over a week, I was stressing for the pond, we also lost a head gasket on one of the cars during that cold snap.

 

[addy1]

I enjoy the pond off time, no running water to worry about. I pull all pumps, put in the pond breathers, the pond does fine for 4-5 months sitting there. My bog would cool the water way to much, due to its surface area and the chance of a ice dam is way to high to leave it running.

 

[teeemkay]

We let the pumps/waterfalls run all winter and everything was fine. The only downside was the electric bill was higher the months we had to run the high-watt de-icers for weeks at a time.