Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Diverting water from a gutter downspout to a pond

Is it ok to divert rain from a barn roof to a pond? Does it matter if it’s a metal roof or a shingled roof? I have a large building that’s shingled that I could use or my barn which has the typical metal roof. Are there downsides or hazards to my fish that I should consider? Has anyone done this that has any advice or recommendations? It’s an idea I’ve been mulling over for awhile. I want to bury the pipe and include a inline filter to catch debris if such a thing exists.
Thank you.

I did that from my house to my pond, also have a geothermal open loop system on my house that uses well water for cooling and heating and then it drains into the pond too.

loretta: I just did this from my barn to my pond. My shingled roof is pretty old, so there is no grit. I have no idea if it will make a difference (my pond volume is 3.35 acre-ft), but I guess every little bit helps.

The downside is that I had to invest in 300 ft of 4" corregated drain pipe. Some I bought new, some I bought used through Facebook Marketplace. This pipe is the most economical for long runs.

I will get around to burying it someday.

Welcome back Loretta!! We missed you!! Glad you stopped back.

I can't help with this question except to say that gathering all the free water you can and diverting to the pond sounds great. I don't think you will need a tight filtration netting, a few stones from the roof won't hurt. You may need a larger 'trash trap' maybe with 1" gaps to catch the heavy mass of maple 'helicopter' seeds, or the heavy spring seed pods from Oak trees if they are overlying the roof as they do tend to build up in gutters in the spring.

How is your pond otherwise? How are your YP? are you stocking new things or just enjoying what you have?

all of my buildings have steel rooves. Rainfall , snow melt from my buildings rooves ( 4 ) , drain to my upper 1.6 -1.8 Surface Acre
upper pond. No issues so far, Western Oklahoma , I don't waste free water. The little your roof supplies, I'm certain is diluted by your
natural surface drainage. No expert, but other than bird poo, can't see an issue.

I did this as well. To catch debris, I bought some mesh nylon bags on Amazon a little larger than the pipe. Just need to check/clean it every once in a while. It also helped stop small fish swimming up the pipe when the pond was near full and a lot of water was coming out of the pipe. Still amazed at how many made it into the pipe.

Thanks Canyoncreek! I didn’t know if anyone would remember me, I wasn’t a huge poster, more of a reader and I learned so much here! Of all the forums I’ve been to this one is the friendliest with the best people. I’m having a little bit of trouble learning the site again.

Fishingadventure, I was hoping someone had done this with steel roofs. My neighbor used to have a downspout coming off their steel barn roof into a trough for horses. The water always had what looked like an oily film on top of the water, because of the oily looking film they stopped using it like that. I wasn’t sure it this would hurt my pond. Thanks for your feedback, I would much rather use my steel roof because it’s closer to my pond.

Knobbier, your picture looks so much like my yard 😁. I’ve used long runs of that corrugated pipe over the years, it doesn’t last long in the suns UV radiation, don’t wait too long to bury it. Thanks so much for your feedback!

Drago your mesh bag sounds like a winner and an easy solution. Did you just tie it on the pipe or use Velcro? I overthink things and was contemplating having an accessible clean out where I could put in some filter material, this was mostly for if used my shingled roof.

Fish are ungrateful and will try to swim away 😉, before my overflow was installed they would escape my pond onto the lawn where the pond overflowed.

Thanks for the tip on the UV!

Instead of mesh bag filter/ cleanout, what about stopping the downspout just shy of the pond, digging a little trench to the pond and filling it with some limestone gravel for some natural filtration?

We remember you, loretta. You gave some interesting comments several times.
Welcome back to the forum. Don't leave again, ya' hear?

DrewSh, this is a good idea and I see a popular option. It probably wouldn’t take long to plug up though, I get a lot of maple seeds in my gutter. I will keep this in mind. Thank you.

Interesting comments, hmmm 🤔 , I hope that’s good 😁. I would love this comment instead of just like it if I could. I might putts around a while but this site is so slow for me, it takes a lot of time to load pages and it’s very time consuming for what I would like to do here. Maybe it’s my iPad? I didn’t have an iPad back then so I’m not sure. Is there an update that I need maybe? I’m open to suggestions to fix this.

Thanks for the nice welcome 4Corners!

Yes, the mesh bag has a draw string that I just tighten around the pipe. I also have a short rope connected to the end of the draw sting attached to a stake in case it was to come loose.

It is not you nor your iPad. The site is slow, especially the last week or so.

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Thanks for letting me know Knobber

Get gutter guards otherwise the seeds may rot your gutter.