New homeowner as of last year, trying to get our pond purely operational. Complete pond newbie who is learning.
Goal: No fish planned. We have lots of natural wildlife which live around/come to the pond (ducks, deer, rabbits, frogs, garters, the birds, etc) and we're content w/ the vegetation/appearance + trickle sounds for now. We're OK using algaecide or what not.
Pond: Small entrance pond on the right, fills, runs over the flagstone into a river bed, under bridge, into the main pond, flowing back to the bottom left into the Savio compact skimmer box - uses pressure for the seal. Inside the skimmer is just an enclosed pump, no other filtration/catch. No aeration currently in the pond or UV. Other than occasional floating fall leaves/garden chopping, it is debris free and gets a ton of sun. The homeowners had a tote full of random pump gear - a small pump to drain, extra pond hosing, the filter which goes in the skimmer(pump+filter do not both fit so guessing they left it out?), other random parts I'm not sure of yet.
Pond is probably 3-4ft deep, the deepest point is probably an area of 5' x 2' on the bottom.
Issue: The main pond leaks. I'm not entirely sure the pond worked currently when we purchased the house. I have a feeling they had the pond fill for the pictures and had it on for the showing. Looking back at the realtor pics, I can see the water isn't on and flowing over the flagstone in the initial pond. It's lower than the hump which keeps the water in which suggests this has been a thing for some time.
I had the system on early in the year and it drained. My definition of drained = not enough water to go in the skimmer and keep the system cycling. Filled the main pond and left the system off - drained in 12 hours. The pond area seems to be draining as the skimmer will hold water fine. After researching, sounded as though this type of skimmer box gets rusty bolts every 10-15 years (we're at 16 now) and it's a leak spot. Took the faceplate off - screws were entirely fine but the faceplate had a hairline crack running the middle across the screw lines like someone overtightened it and maybe winter expansion caused crack. After even more crazy research, finally found/ordered a new skimmer faceplate. Replaced and the pond drained again over the course of 2-3 days which was better but still bad. (picture with chalk on the side of the skimmer measuring how fast the water was dropping over time) Drained the pond again and removed all the rocks/debris at the minimum water level to see if I had cuts in the liner and saw nothing. Minimum level is always around the bottom of the screw holes for the skimmer.
Getting annoyed as can't keep the pond filled due to draining and can't keep the pond empty due to rain so it's becoming a mosquito pond.
Found a hack to try washers on the outside of the faceplate for more even distribution of pressure/seal. It didn't work.
Newbie thoughts: Started trying to research parts of the pond and see there may not be a mandatory need for a skimmer box in all setups? Like I noted, we're pretty debris free, some amateur pump, have a net to skim, no fish. Can't say I can get partner buy in to do hundreds of dollars in repairs - she'd likely say pull it all and fill it in which I'm avoiding as I love the pond myself.
Ideas:
1. Other skimmer boxes use caulk to seal. Called our irrigation/pond guy who's busy, didn't know much of Savio, and said they generally use caulk to seal for all their normal installations. Savio says not to use caulk since it's a pressure seal system. Still try to caulk the tiny lines of the skimmer box and retry system to see if it'll seal - still seems like a temporary fix?
2. Detach the liner, prop it up into the air essentially so the skimmer hole is just sticking up in the air above the fill lines, and fill the pond up one last time to ensure the leak isnt around the rocks (removing skimmer area from equation)
3. Purchase a new skimmer box. I'd imagine the holes in the liner wouldn't be exact and I'd have to pull the liner up/back into the main pond area to get fresh unpunctured liner. Reseat the skimmer box more forward in the ground, poke new holes, making the pond smaller?
4. Realize we're not doing fish and ponder if we need a new skimmer box - is there any way to ADD onto existing liner? Thought of taking the skimmer box out completely, fleshing the area out with more liner, a little deeper. The pond tubing is in the ground from the side and I wondered since the pump is already enclosed and no debris issues, if we could just set the pump on the bottom of the now-open-and-lined-skimmer-area. I thought about building a little bridge over the area to shade it.
Any thoughts on how I fix the leak?
I would love to take out the skimmer box and go with the more liner + pump on bottom approach for my own reasons.
Algae being an entirely different subject - still water is developing green string algae it appears. Given our setup, adding some algaecide, and system actually working/cycling water - will we still be getting algae?
Goal: No fish planned. We have lots of natural wildlife which live around/come to the pond (ducks, deer, rabbits, frogs, garters, the birds, etc) and we're content w/ the vegetation/appearance + trickle sounds for now. We're OK using algaecide or what not.
Pond: Small entrance pond on the right, fills, runs over the flagstone into a river bed, under bridge, into the main pond, flowing back to the bottom left into the Savio compact skimmer box - uses pressure for the seal. Inside the skimmer is just an enclosed pump, no other filtration/catch. No aeration currently in the pond or UV. Other than occasional floating fall leaves/garden chopping, it is debris free and gets a ton of sun. The homeowners had a tote full of random pump gear - a small pump to drain, extra pond hosing, the filter which goes in the skimmer(pump+filter do not both fit so guessing they left it out?), other random parts I'm not sure of yet.
Pond is probably 3-4ft deep, the deepest point is probably an area of 5' x 2' on the bottom.
Issue: The main pond leaks. I'm not entirely sure the pond worked currently when we purchased the house. I have a feeling they had the pond fill for the pictures and had it on for the showing. Looking back at the realtor pics, I can see the water isn't on and flowing over the flagstone in the initial pond. It's lower than the hump which keeps the water in which suggests this has been a thing for some time.
I had the system on early in the year and it drained. My definition of drained = not enough water to go in the skimmer and keep the system cycling. Filled the main pond and left the system off - drained in 12 hours. The pond area seems to be draining as the skimmer will hold water fine. After researching, sounded as though this type of skimmer box gets rusty bolts every 10-15 years (we're at 16 now) and it's a leak spot. Took the faceplate off - screws were entirely fine but the faceplate had a hairline crack running the middle across the screw lines like someone overtightened it and maybe winter expansion caused crack. After even more crazy research, finally found/ordered a new skimmer faceplate. Replaced and the pond drained again over the course of 2-3 days which was better but still bad. (picture with chalk on the side of the skimmer measuring how fast the water was dropping over time) Drained the pond again and removed all the rocks/debris at the minimum water level to see if I had cuts in the liner and saw nothing. Minimum level is always around the bottom of the screw holes for the skimmer.
Getting annoyed as can't keep the pond filled due to draining and can't keep the pond empty due to rain so it's becoming a mosquito pond.
Found a hack to try washers on the outside of the faceplate for more even distribution of pressure/seal. It didn't work.
Newbie thoughts: Started trying to research parts of the pond and see there may not be a mandatory need for a skimmer box in all setups? Like I noted, we're pretty debris free, some amateur pump, have a net to skim, no fish. Can't say I can get partner buy in to do hundreds of dollars in repairs - she'd likely say pull it all and fill it in which I'm avoiding as I love the pond myself.
Ideas:
1. Other skimmer boxes use caulk to seal. Called our irrigation/pond guy who's busy, didn't know much of Savio, and said they generally use caulk to seal for all their normal installations. Savio says not to use caulk since it's a pressure seal system. Still try to caulk the tiny lines of the skimmer box and retry system to see if it'll seal - still seems like a temporary fix?
2. Detach the liner, prop it up into the air essentially so the skimmer hole is just sticking up in the air above the fill lines, and fill the pond up one last time to ensure the leak isnt around the rocks (removing skimmer area from equation)
3. Purchase a new skimmer box. I'd imagine the holes in the liner wouldn't be exact and I'd have to pull the liner up/back into the main pond area to get fresh unpunctured liner. Reseat the skimmer box more forward in the ground, poke new holes, making the pond smaller?
4. Realize we're not doing fish and ponder if we need a new skimmer box - is there any way to ADD onto existing liner? Thought of taking the skimmer box out completely, fleshing the area out with more liner, a little deeper. The pond tubing is in the ground from the side and I wondered since the pump is already enclosed and no debris issues, if we could just set the pump on the bottom of the now-open-and-lined-skimmer-area. I thought about building a little bridge over the area to shade it.
Any thoughts on how I fix the leak?
I would love to take out the skimmer box and go with the more liner + pump on bottom approach for my own reasons.
Algae being an entirely different subject - still water is developing green string algae it appears. Given our setup, adding some algaecide, and system actually working/cycling water - will we still be getting algae?
