Pond Boss Forums,

It's hard to believe that is has been nearly 3 years since I last shared about my pond project. It's unbelievable how fast time has gone! I will have a little time over the next couple weeks to catch up on all that has happened with my body of water. It's certainly been a fun couple years to watch my pond and continue to progress it the best that time and resources have allowed. It looks like my last posts pertained to my aeration project in July of 2019 so that's where I plan to pick back up. One of my main goals from this thread is to provide as much of a comprehensive log of my journey as possible all in one location so that others can pull ideas of what to do (and certainly what not to do) when they have a question about their pond build and management. I know I have spent hours and hours reading through threads on this forum and have benefitted greatly from the experience of its users.

Here is a link to the thread that was started on aerating my body of water. Pond Aeration

I ended up making my own "weighted" line using landscape irrigation pipe and 4" corrugated pipe. I cut the 4" corrugated pipe into 2.5" sections and drilled a hole through each one so it could be threaded on to the irrigation pipe and filled with concrete to sink it. I spaced the corrugated pipe sections about 6' apart and that seemed to work just about right. The line wasn't too heavy to handle on the bank and yet it sunk fine. I didn't get pictures of this on my pond, but put in another system for a friend and got pictures of it. We measured how long our runs needed to be and cut and stretched the air lines out on the dam. We then threaded all the "pucks" onto the line and mixed and poured the concrete in each puck. We let them sit over night and moved them the next morning. Overall, it took 100' of corrugated pipe, a few hours to cut it into sections and drill the holes, and a couple hours to thread them onto the lines and pour the concrete. I then used 5 gallon buckets to mount my diffusers on. We poured about 15 pounds of concrete in the bottom of each bucket and the diffusers I bought fit snugly onto the top of the bucket with the bucket handle lifted straight up. On my buddies system we did everything from start to finish in a day and a half and he has 6 diffusers, over 1000' of pipe, 250 pucks, and 15 bags of Quickcrete. We just had to make sure that we ran the pipes out on the dam in the correct order so that when we swung them out into the water we didn't have to drag lines over one another and risk them becoming entangled. I would set the bucket with diffuser on it on the deck of my boat and use my trolling motor to pull them out into position. Another person stayed on the bank and fed the line into the water. You do have to be careful not to kink the line as you swing it in. We did that a time or two but were easily able to straighten it back out; that irrigation line is tough. Once in position, I would tie a small string to the bucket handle and drop it down to the bottom and then tie a 4" section of pool noodle to the string as a float right above the aerator. I did this thinking that it would make it easy for me to grab and just pull the whole system up for maintenance or cleaning, but I have never once had to do that on my BOY in the almost 3 years that system has been running and I don't notice any decrease in air flow. We used irrigation valve control boxes for our valves and I made a homemade box for my pump to set outside my shed that was about 200' away. The box is pretty redneck looking, but it keeps the system pretty quiet and out of sight. The entire system cost less than $1,500 for all materials and works great. There are a couple pictures attached that show what it looks like set up on the dam and ready to go into the water.

I have had no problems with the system and I'm on season 3 with it. I've never even touched the ball valves since they were adjusted on the first day. One picture shows the impact that the aerators have on turned the water over. When it rains lightly, the areas that each diffuses impacts show up really well; it's pretty cool to see.

I typically run my system from Aprilish to Novemberish and remove my pump at the end of each season. Overall, I'm really happy with my system and know that it has been a great addition to my pond.
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