I believe I understand now. There are basically two ways to do it: 1. Plug the pipes and fill it up with water 2. Plug the pipes and pull a vacuum thereby filling the pipes up with pond water. I guess there are a thousand ways to do this. I probably won't do it manually so I need a pump (gas or electric). My next question is how strong of a pump do you need to pull a vacuum? If I wanted to fill the pipe with water, I guess I could use a cheap 12 volt bilge pump (the kind found in boats, about 500 gallons per hour) that I could submerge in the pond and run off of a vehicle battery. I wouldn't mind buying something like a gas powered pressure washer to do the job but I don't want to purchase something that is only used to do this one thing.

I started with nothing, and still have most of it.