Custom 68: I didn't have a ruler in the water in the spring or summer so I can't be sure how much I lose. I had it in from late summer to early fall and watched it long enough to say that it was about 1" per day. Some of this was late summer heat and evaporation, but the biggest variable was the ground water table. If the water table was saturated it would hold level pretty good and go down slowly. But if the weather was dry for 10-14 days and the water table started dropping then it would drop the pond faster.

I don't know if the pond would hit a 'low point' and never drop after that. I suspect since my leak was probably all over in the bottom but mainly in the gravel/sand vein that the excavator hit that I probably would have continued down a ways. I always started pumping when it got bad, and also we were bound to get another rain which would help me help fill it faster.

To address your leak, you have to decide if you think you know where it is leaking and how reliably you feel that is the answer. If not, then you are best off treating the whole thing. TJ can help you on the logistics of deciding, where, when, and how much to treat on the first go round. My pond was small enough and I felt i wanted to do this once so I went all out. I may even have to do a second application but so far so good.

I'm sure especially when my pond was newly 'redug' we had leakage in the side walls of the pond as you could see the water wicking up into the dirt on the side walls even above the water level. But by now I think that part is not happening much and I treated the sides up into the grass a bit to try to prevent that.

You have to take into account so many variables when working on your own project, including how much vegetation you have on the bottom and what the current water temps are.

Right now I'm still sticking at about 1" water loss per week, we had unusually nice 50-60 deg days the past few days and I think we had a little evaporation. However i think i probably still have a little leak through the bottom, hard to say.

A very slow leak isn't so bad for me since I need to make room for future large advances of water from rain events. In the winter it probably will still lose volume over the long winter under the ice but we'll see.

I can't see the bottom anymore as the shallows are coated with oak leaves. A few very sad looking tilapia oriented straight up in the water, lips moving, gills flailing, using fins to try to keep their head upright, struggling to stay alive one more day. I feel badly and have run the aerator in the sunlight hours to try to get them a little more warm water turned over for them. I imagine November 16 is probably the latest I'll ever see tilapia alive in my pond as we usually have much colder Novembers than this year.

The crayfish don't mind, I see a few picked clean tilapia carcases on the bottom. The circle of life continues..

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4Corners, we have a pipe from the well that is now about 30 feet out from the bank and right on the bottom. We tried raising the ice in the winter but even running it slow, the warm water coming out of that pipe (55 or so deg) seems to just come straight up and pool in one warm pocket. It creates a hole and slushes up the underside of any snow that is on the ice and ruins the ice. I guess if you had a way to prechill the water to 39 and then send it out into the pond that might work. I guess if you set up a big closed loop heat exchanger on the bottom, ran the water through that loop for enough time for the pond to cool it down then released it it would work fine.


Last edited by canyoncreek; 11/16/15 02:52 PM.