My siphon system is two 6 inch pipes sharing a single vent. The entire system is inside of the dam. I used a 10 inch sock pipe to bring the water level of the pond inside the dam to the vent. Not pictured is the 18 inch piece of culvert pipe I put over this that acts as a pit. I ran a 4 inch piece of pipe to the surface with a grate flush with the ground for the air to enter. I also capped the pit with a concrete cap and covered it with dirt and grass. My dam is 3 feet higher than the water level and I live in an area with an 18 inch frost depth. Even in southern climates, You wouldn't have to worry about debris clogging the vent or having a pipe to mow around with this design.


Edit: I'm adding a drawing that isn't exactly to scale of what I did, but maybe is representative of my design.


I extended the sock over the tee to keep any dirt from entering the sock pipe as I backfilled. I removed it once I had everything backfilled and compacted.



This is the inside face of the dam.



The sock pipe is covered in #2 gravel.



Here is the siphon in action.

That’s an interesting concept. Took me a moment to wrap my head around it…..lol



Looks like you did a really nice pipefitting job………. Thanks for posting the pics.

I wish I had taken more pictures. I installed this in October 2010 and I haven't had a problem with it yet.I did a search on siphon systems and didn't come up with any designs for cold climates. I did find some post about not being able to do an automatic siphon system in cold climates. So I just wanted to put something on here in case somebody searched for it.

I wish you had taken more pics too!!!

I just finished another pond with this same design. It is a small 1/3 acre pond. It has a watershed around 3 acres. So two 4 inch pipes should be enough. I just finished it mid September. So here are some pictures of that install with a little description of what I did:

I used two 4 inch sdr 35 pipes for the primary drain with a 2 inch vent. I used a 6 inch sock pipe to allow the water level inside the dam up to the 2 inch vent. All this is just in front of the core.


Here you can see where the sock pipe resurfaces on the slope of the dam.


I covered the sock pipe in #2 gravel.


I'm at full pool and my grass is coming up, I haven't had enough rain to confirm if it will go into syphon. My dam is 16 inches higher than the full water mark and my emergency spillway is 6 inches lower than the dam.

Is there any news on this build with regards to achieving full siphon and if it functioning during the winter freeze? The best I can tell I'm somewhere around a 5' frost line on most maps I have found online when going with the next lower level for safety with water pipes. I really like the advantages of this type of system for removing the lower oxygen water at the bottom of the pond and allowing better oxygenated water to enter the pond.

I haven't had enough precipitation in the last 10 years to make the pipes kick into siphon mode during the winter freeze. I have no reason to think that it wouldn't work during the winter freeze, we just haven't had enough rain to make it go into siphon during winter freeze. I have seen 6 inches of snow weigh down the ice covering my pond push some water out the drainage pipes, just not enough to make it go into siphon mode.

I am going to try to replicate your design on the 1.5 - 2 acre pond I having built next summer on the NY/PA border.

This spring I had a muskrat tunnel down next to my vent and into my siphon pit. I had to dig it out and make sure the tunnels didn't cause any problems with my dam. Luckily it was just in the area of my pit. So while I was doing repair work, I decided to make some modifications. One of the problems with a single vent with 2 drain pipes was that at the start of siphon mode, my pipes would alternate the siphon until the water level raised a little more. It still went into full siphon mode, but probably allowed my water level to raise faster then it would have with two vents. So I modified it so each pipe has its own vent. I would recommend that if you go with dual pipes. I also made my pit with a concrete bottom and concrete blocks all the way to the surface as I never thought a muskrat would get into my system. I'll load some pictures of the finished product here soon.

Any additional pictures and explanation of the design would be greatly appreciated. Though muskrats aren't plentiful where I live, they are around so I will use any info you are willing to share.

Yes, pictures and explanation in words would be very helpful. I can't understand how these things work. In the pictures above I also don't understand why there is a green pipe sticking vertically up in the bottom of the empty pond (3rd photo down) But in the next set of pictures it seems to have a different design with no 'stand pipe' but a sock instead?

How does the vertical pipe work?

Where does the air vent draw air from since the vent pipes seem to be sealed?

Here is the siphon pit when I dug it out. You can see the vent on the left side of the picture. The white culvert was cut to allow it to sit over the 6 inch pipes which left an opening under the 6 inch pipe where the muskrat tunneled into my pit.

Here is a picture of the modified pit. I used an irrigation box for the surface cover.

You got to love those muskrats.

Why do you make such a long sock pipe? I would think that it only needs to be under the water below the frost line plus a couple feet for safety. With the way you have it, your sock pipe could freeze if your pond was low. This would only be a problem when the ice level is below your sock level.Using a solid pipe that is under frost line coming up near the bottom of the pond with a pile of rock on the end may work better if you live in a area that has a lot of droughts. For those of us that work on a very low budget you could use a lot less rock.
I like the idea of getting the bad water out first. Any idea how much water would come out a 4 inch pipe?

I must be the dim-wit one but I can't follow much of this. It appears there is a sock pipe 'intake' or a vertical stand pipe 'intake'. I don't get the rest. But I trust it works well.

If someone has time and energy to explain or show pictures of how it works that would be great apologies in advance

Im with canyon. Im sure I would get it if I was there looking at it. I just cant wrap my head around how it works.

The sock pipe is used only for the water level to the vent. The only water that exits the pond from the sock pipe would be what is sucked up the vent. This works like any siphon system only the vent is below the ground level. Instead of running a vent back to the pond, I brought the water level inside of the dam. This way it is out of the way of mowing, and frost proof.

nehunter, the length of the sock pipe is not crucial, I just used what I had and covered it with gravel. The sock pipe is not an intake for the siphon system. It only allows the water level to reach my vent.

I have posted pictures of two siphon systems from two different ponds on this thread. In the second picture from my original post, I had two 6 inch pipes connected with a tee as the shared vent. In my last picture posted on 12-3-2019, I have cut out the tee and put two separate 2 inch vents and concreted the bottom and laid block up to a irrigation box that I purchased from Lowes. You can see the water level up to the two separate vents.

DC70,

Everything about your system meets my criteria. I'm in the process of building ponds on my farm. I don't quite understand everything you have going on. Do you think you could help a newbie out?

I understand how to implement this system to work based on the picture posted of the updated concrete block design.

I will add a check valve and the ability to use a 2" pump to start the system on demand with a little bit of labor.

I will post pictures of this system implemented in a thread about my new pond build that will be completed this summer.

That's great. Do you have a plan sketched out that you can share?

I created this thread to show how I modified a standard siphon system so it can be used in northern climates. There is information out there describing how siphon systems work so I didn't go into detail on that part. I noticed some confusion on my design and wasn't sure if it was on siphon systems or how I modified it to work in my design.

Forgive my ignorance but i could really use help in both areas. A link to a diagram or explanation on how the standard cold weather siphon system works would be good for us to get the typical install plan under our belt.

Then tell us how your system works. It looks like in the pictures there are several variations on your system(s) based on how the pipes travel either vertical from the bottom of the pond or lay horizontally in the pond, plus, can't tell what is going on in all of those buried couplings and vents.

I am not aware of a standard cold weather siphon system, but here is a link to a spillway-siphon system.
http://www.ponddampiping.com/syphon1.html

My Dam is 3 feet higher than the water level and the frost depth is 18"-24" in my location. So I have the depth needed for my vent to be below the frost line. Most siphon systems have a pipe that extends back to the pond usually above ground for the vent. My modification was to bring the pond water level to the vent all underground. I used a sock pipe and covered it with gravel on the inside slope of the dam and it extends into my pit so the water level in my pit is the same as the pond.

I had a 6" pipe in the bottom for a construction drain that I put a vertical pipe on it with holes drilled in it and covered it with gravel as a filter. On the back side of my dam I have a 6" valve on it so I can drain my pond down when I need to work on it. I also have a smaller pipe with a valve on it that I use to irrigate my garden and berries in the field below my pond. Here is a picture of the valves while I was working on it.

DC70, thanks so much for this, very helpful! I just have two questions.

1) Why sock pipe? It's perforated, right? If so, it seems like it water would seep out of the sock pipe and into the dam over time? Could you just use PVC pipe instead of sock pipe?

2) What happens in a very heavy rain when the water level gets above the highest part of the sock pipe (circled in attached picutre)? Seems like the water would spill out into the dam at that point?

Welcome to the forum. At the present time to post pictures you need to put them on a hosting site like Imgur, then paste the BBCode link here, that will make the picture show up in your posts.

I have perfected a freeze proof siphon that is much simpler and all self contained to where the inside of the dam does not get saturated in high water events....All that is visible is a landscaping irrigation access box

Done in a different way, there is no need for a socked pipe, and the entire system can be brought within the dam in a simpler design, below any frost/freeze line, and contains all water within the system, plus can be manually started any time you'd want to lower the pond

Rainman, now the imgur hosting system isn't allowing you to embed your picture in your post above. I will try to fix it for you. It looks like in my web address in between the [img] brackets my address ends with WfUOYJo.jpeg It looks like your link above has an extra ? and a 1 after that which might be throwing it off.

Your pictures are tantalizing. I don't know if you are purposely intending for us to be curious and ask more questions? I know you said you didn't want us to know how your design works or allow any one else to recreate it. Please help the original poster privately if that is your intention otherwise I can't handle the suspense

Yep, he had it ending in .jpg?1. I removed the ?1 and the picture showed up.

Canyoncreek, in a previous comment, it sounded like you were tryin got understand the siphon system in this link? http://www.ponddampiping.com/syphon1.html

If so, I believe this video explains it well. You have to read the captions but I believe it explains it pretty well. See if that helps. From there, I think we can figure out how they are bringing this into the dam. Help?

Thanks again for fixing my images Scott!

[quote=canyoncreek]Rainman, now the imgur hosting system isn't allowing you to embed your picture in your post above. I will try to fix it for you. It looks like in my web address in between the [img] brackets my address ends with WfUOYJo.jpeg It looks like your link above has an extra ? and a 1 after that which might be throwing it off.

Your pictures are tantalizing. I don't know if you are purposely intending for us to be curious and ask more questions? I know you said you didn't want us to know how your design works or allow any one else to recreate it. Please help the original poster privately if that is your intention otherwise I can't handle the suspense

I am pretty sure DC70 (the OP) already figured out a way on his system. As DC70's design shows, there is usually more than one way to accomplish a goal....in this case, to create a siphon system usuable in winter. I commented because someone posting anonymously on a FB group linked this post in a FB comment. The person also apparantly wants to goad me into revealing my proprietary knowledge. But as DC70's design shows, there are other ways to bring the air break inside the dam, and make it an all weather system. I thgink my system is much simpler, and has an inlet strainer and other design details that should eliminate any chance of clogging, failure, or need for maintenance...For some reason, the heckler on FB seems to feel my design and work should be free to all, and perhaps feels I'm wrong to make a profit from my knowledge and work....I'm sorry if I've kept you in suspense! LOL