Pond Boss Forums AERATION Should I aerate? Small Pond Aeration

No disable feature that I am aware of for pond aeration windmills. I used to sell these pond aeration windmills until I lived with one for several years and had time to compare them to quality electric aeration. FYI I still have a windmill operating in a small remote pond. IMO when you have a windmill you do not want to operate it only part time. The wind is too sporadic speed and direction wise that for monitoring when you need aeration for varying pond conditions is beyond just about everyone's practical capability.

IMO pond aeration should be operated to provide slight "overkill" operation daily to maintain oxygenated conditions throughout the water column and most importantly adequate DO (1.5-3ppm) on top of the highly oxygen consuming sediments (BOD - biochemical oxygen demand). This is almost a pond by pond variable. Thus most "expert" aeration advice is to operate it 24/7 to cover all 'bases' in all parts of the country. IMO the warmer the climate, and older, more eutrophic the pond, the more the need for 24/7 aeration. But one has to be ecologically wise enough to assess this important variable.

The other main thing one has to realize with windmills is they need a minimum wind speed to operate the diffuser. As wind speed increases the air flow to the bubbler increases until you get optimum air flow and good bubbling and upwelling by the diffuser. One does not realize the wind needs to be blowing pretty good above 5mpg to get good bubble flow compared to an electric compressor. And the deeper the diffuser is the more wind speed is needed to blow air out at that deeper depth. The deeper the diffuser is the greater the wind speed needs to be to create useful bubble boil. My windmill spins often in a breeze but not fast enough to produce bubbles at the surface.