As my mind is always turning, as I watched a sprinkler that was watering new grass near my trout pond, I realized another way to keep the warming rate of the pond water down or to halt it. Seems to me if one mounted a sprinkler in the center of the pond with a continuous mist or spray -- along with evaporation (which causes cooling) --the surface water would have a hard time warming up in the hot sun. Considering the water going to the sprinkler is about 52 degrees from my outside faucet that would seem to aid in the reduction of warming too.

Maybe something for someone to consider as a saftey net during excessively hot weather for marginal small trout ponds?

I realize surface aerators in trout ponds can actually warm the water by exposing it to the higher temps but my thinking is with the finer mist or stream evaporation would actually induce cooling or at least keep warming at bay.

Thoughts? How about it engineers?

Do you mean the water from your house, as in public water, is 52 degrees? Or is that outside faucet from your well?

That's water from the outside faucet which comes from well water. This is a separate well than my aquaculture well. However. with the right high pressure pump submerged in my aquaculture well tank water that is destined for the trout pond would work too.

Not saying I would do this but I'm just curious if this would work.

I have wondered if you could circulate the pond water down into the ground deeply like a well and bring it back up again the way geothermal heat exchanges heat homes or cool them. It looks to me like the energy spent would only be that of overcoming the friction in the pipes of the underground exchange system as the hydraulic pressure of the fluid column going down would offset the pressure needed to pump the water back up. Anyone know if this has been tried?

Somebody (???) here was talking about using geothermal in a pond to affect the water temp and was thinking of making a large copper pipe "radiator" to work as the heat exchanger. This was a year or so ago; I can't recall a followup since then.

Cecil, the evaporative cooling would only cool the water falling from the sprinkler and I am not sure how much cooler than 52 degrees it would get. The cool water would mix with the warmer surface water and produce some cooling; it would be interesting to know if it could cool more than the other factors could heat.

My understanding is that using surface aerators warm the water because it mixes as it pulls water into it, but what would happen if you forced it to pull from the very top layer of water. Fountain Aerators I have seen draw vertically, but if they could be rigged to draw horizontally at a couple inches below the surface it should minimize mixing of the water and cool the top layer of water.

Another option that might work if you don’t mind the expense of pumping water from the pond is a bong cooler (check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bong_cooler). These are used for water cooled computer systems, but might be able to handle cooling needs of a trout pond. It also could be rigged into a system similar to Cecil’s bucket aeration posted under “Cecil's place”.

I am also interested in the geothermal idea. If anybody has tied this let me know! It should work the trick is finding the right length of Pex tubing to run. If you need to run 400’ of tubing to maintain cooling through the summer it could get pricey and will tear up a lot of the yard. I wonder what would happen if several sets of pex coils were buried beneath the bottom of the pond at construction…

My last idea came from the keg-a-rator I built in college. This would require a lot (maybe 1000’) of 3/8” or ¼” tubing coiled wrapped around kegs (or 5gallon buckets full of water/ice) in a chest freezer. The idea is to pump the pond water through the tubes in the chest freezer and hope the water chills down to the 60s and then pump it out to the pond again.

Bender,

I don't think it will be enough. Not only do you need cooler water you also need to flush nutrients from the pond if you have a good number of trout and you are feeding them. If you don't feed them your pond won't be able to hold very many at that size.

My idea to use a sprinkler or mist on really hot days was probably not something I will do, or if i do it, it will be as an experiment. I was thinking it would be an option in ponds where temps are marginal.

The other day when we were in the low 90's here my surface temp was still in the low 60's with the temp at 62 about 4 feet down. I can't reach out very far to the deepest water so it may have been even cooler than that there. (I only run the diffuser during the night or when highs for the day are under the mid to upper 70's. )


I hate to be party pooper but if you don't run cold ground water into your pond on a continous basis in summer you trout won't make it.

>>I hate to be party pooper but if you don't run cold ground water into your pond on a continous basis in summer you trout won't make it.
>>


Out of curiousity do you happen to know how much water would need to be flushed out of the pond per day? I know you are flushing 38 gpm, but is that necessary when temps are under control (ie when pellet feeding YP)?