Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Heat a pond

Has anyone had any luck with heating up a small portion of their pond.It would have to be passive. Might be a good way to jump start the early fishing.

Yeah aeration.

Passive(not related to personality) in this case means no electric at site. It is 6000 ft. to electric.

Boy, that's kind of a tough one, I suspect. Some have suggested using black tarp/landscape fabric/etc on the bottom of the pond to absorb some light and warmth, but that would probably have an incredibly limited impact given the total volume of water moving in a pond.

Another thought might be tapping into geothermal resources, but that would be quite costly, I suspect, just to warm up some water and would probably require electric.

How about just pointing one of those big commercial propane torpedo heaters at the water and refilling the tank as needed?

Interesting concept, but without power, probably a much tougher fix.

I know of a pond that has geothermal coils in it. The fish like it in the winter.

I remember seeing a cheap simple solar heating system for a swimming pool. Make an angled simple frame work of a couple of telephone poles with a cross member at the upper top of the two poles. Then steel barn roofing or siding dark brown that is slanted at an angle facing south with the bottom of the siding draining into the pond. No glazing. Pump pond water across the top and let it drain into the pond. For a small pond the size of the siding might be 20 by 40 feet.

Battery powered areator.


a wind mill for areation.

how much money you willing to spend??

Copper coils like they said and then bring them above to a fire.

or build the fire pit deep in the ground.

Large solar reflectors and a dark target? It takes a lot of energy to warm water and keep it that way without insulation.

In Va. copper coils+fire= jailtime.

Just tell the judge you were only making antifreeze for your pond

Aeration will actually cool a pond this time of year. It will be pulling the 40 degree (heaviest/warmest) water from the bottom of a frozen, or near frozen pond, and replacing it with the colder water from near the surface. Thus, the warmest water will then be subjected to the cold surface air or ice. So, the overall effect is cooling, not heating.

The only way that I can think of doing it is just like the solar water heaters that I used to see on the roofs of houses. Since there is no power at the ponds, any water that is pumped would have to be hooked up to a solar powered water pump.

Have you addressed the vandalism problems that you had?

http://www.euro-matic.com/hollow.html

cheers

Use a closed passive solar hot water system. No electric or pump needed. But the heating coils need to be lower than the water you want to heat. Ideally this would work if you have a south facing dam. Put the heating coils at the bottom of the dam. As the fluid heats it rises to the coils in the water near the top of the dam. The heat will transfer to the water and the cooled off fluid flows back down to the heating coils. If you can�t get the heating coils lower than the water level a solar circulating pump will also work.

I can envision a cheap DYI project using 1� black tubing, black painted plywood and some glass or Plexiglas.

I don't think anybody property will be safe until the enonomy turns around. Young kids can't get a job so some turn to illegal means to get their spending money. The unemp. rate in Va. is only 5.8% but it is the worse time for most people in my career. Hopefully things will get better in the future.

I think alot of factors play into it it's not quite that cut and dry.. It could be timed to run a certain amount of time to in fact not get to super cooling stage yet still warm the water..

Could be said... Thus, the coolest water will then be subjected to the warm lower colum., so the overall effect is warming not cooling..

Mudhole, your idea interests me as I have several ins. glass panes that are 4'x4'.This would need to be put on the N.E. points as they warm up faster then the other areas. I just can't visualize how it would go together. If you could get the water a few degrees warmer, I think fish would migrate there as they do to power plants.

I gotta go with Catmandoo on this one , BGK. I don't think aeration is going to do anything but cool a pond right now. That's one reason that those running aeration have to be cautious about the depth of their diffusers in the winter - supercooling will occur and likely lead to winterkill. Remember, too, that there is a LOT of water that will still be cold and any heating method is likely to be overwhelmed by the mass of remaining cold water if there is any water movement at all.

All that aside, since he is trying to heat the pond to a sufficient level to spark early fish activity, I think the scope of the idea may be just too darn large to be done in a feasible, cost effective manner. Short of moving to the deep south, that is!

Yes I agree raising the water level to spawning or spring activity levels is basically impossible.. I was thinking a couple degrees tops maybe and running aeration on a timed rotation would not supercool enough to fish kill.. Has a fish kill been documented from supercooling from aeration.. Just curious not looking to argue..

I have not experienced it, but since I don't have aeration yet, I'm safe!

Actually, yes, I've read on here about instances of supercooling leading to widespread kills in ponds. No argument perceived, man, just good discussion on a potentially very important issue.

My understanding - and those experienced with aeration can chime in - is that by moving the diffuser up to a shallower level, the coldest surface water is not circulated to the deepest part of the water column stealing that all important warmer layer that allows the fish to survive.

Many here leave their aeration running through the winter, but typically only after raising their diffusers to the top 1/3 of the water column or even shallower. I believe it is typically done to keep open water for purposes of allowing sunlight into the water for photosynthesis to continue.

Todd, that's what I do (actually I switch to a different diffuser and placement)

In a pond that has both deep and shallow diffusers, the deep diffuser was left open about 20% for half the winter (I wonder why there's that wet spot on the ice where the deepest diffuser is???? )

Water temps at the bottom of the pond were measured at 36.5�F before I realized why that was and turned the deepest diffuser off 100% of the way. No fish were noted as being winterkilled, but then again I don't know if the pond wauld have gotten colder if the diffuser would have stayed partially open. I wasn't going to take that risk, so I shut it off. Now mind you, this wasn't open enough to see bubbles, just open enough for the ice to let water thru it when there was snowpack on the ice.

Interesting experience, Scott. I'm sure I've read some accounts of people getting winterkill by leaving the diffusers running at depth, but I haven't taken the time to try locating those threads.

I have not run any significant numbers, but my gut feeling is that you will not be able to do any reasonable pond-area heating without a very substantial heat source.

Let's assume that Kenc's smaller 13 acre pond has an average depth of 6 feet. That is:

13 acres x 6 feet = 78 acre-feet

An acre-foot of water contains approximately 325,851 gallons.

78 acre-feet x 375,851 gallons per acre-foot = 25,416,378 gallons

It takes approximately 8.34 BTU to raise a gallon of water one degree Fahrenheit. It takes a little more, or a little less, depending on the actual temperature of the water, because BTUs are based on weight, not gallons. I'm assuming that a gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds.

It then takes:

25,416,378 gallons x 8.34 BTU/Gallon/per F degree rise = 211,972,592 BTU to raise that pond just one degree F.

There are approximately 140,000 BTU per gallon of home heating oil.

Assuming 100% efficiency (which we cannot possibly achieve), it would take:

211,972,592 BTU per degree rise / 140,000 BTU per gallon = 1514 gallons of fuel oil needed to raise the water 1 degree F.

So let's say the pond is at 40 degrees, and we want to raise it to 60 degrees, so the fish will start feeding.

That would require over 3000 gallons of fuel oil just to get us to a feeding temperature. Then we would have to maintain that temperature for a period of time to be effective.

Now, granted, the pond will have thermocline layering, currents, and other factors. These will keep any small area from becoming significantly warmer or cooler than any other part of the pond at that same depth, but not substantially. The pond will also have evaporative cooling. This time of year, it may have inflow of cooler water.

In any case, it would take enormous amounts of energy to heat a small area of a pond to the point where warm water fish, like bluegill, crappie, and bass would become active feeders.

Without significant inflow of very warm water, such as from a power plant or office building, I believe that trying to warm a body of water this size, would be cost prohibitive to the average individual.

If this was for a cold water species, such as trout, moderate volumes of well water or spring water could affect a certain small area. I believe Cecil does this in his ponds, but they are much smaller.

In the continental US, well water from 20 feet below the earth's surface is roughly equal to the mean annual air temperature, at that latitude, at the surface. In most cases, well water will not exceed 60 F degrees in the continental US. Where Kenc and I live, water from 20 feet below the ground surface is typically in the mid-50 F degree range. It will stay at that temperature to extremely deep depths.

I would be happy to be proved very wrong -- and I'd go try it myself. But, I just don't see any economical and practical way to raise the temperature, even in small areas of a pond of this size.

In smaller ponds, it certainly could be possible to use solar heating, especially solar heating of an incoming water source, such as a well.

Heated cage culture maybe? But, then why not aquaponics or indoor fish raising?

Ken, IIRC well water in the Dallas area comes out of the ground in the low to mid 60�F range (unless my mind is playing tricks on me).

Scott, you may very well be right. My numbers are from my "childhood" while I was still in college back in the 1960s.
Our ground temperature here, 20 feet and deeper, is at 53 degrees.

I see that the Ogallala aquifer now has a mean temperature of 15.3 degrees C, or about 60 degrees F -- which is higher than I'd expected.

The atmosphere and ground temperature have certainly warmed a lot more than I thought, since my childhood.