With the brutle weather this week (-30 below with the wind chill), I checked my aerator to see if it was still working. I lost a bearing in the pump I was orginaly using and repalced it with and old airbrush compressor I had laying around.

The open hole in the ice went from around six feet in diameter to about 10". The water was still rolling although, the hole has closed in. It took almost two days for the air to reopen the hole after the pump failed.

Anyone have any issues with complete freeze overs while the compressor is still pushing air?

My ice hole will get about a foot diameter and foam will start stacking up and freezing. It builds until it is a 8 foot tall and 18" diameter foam snow man thing but I don't think it could ever freeze over. Windmills can freeze over and then build a massive amount of pressure. A friend of mine went out to his pond and chopped the ice with his axe and air came rushing out. When the air quit coming water came out like a geiser 18 inches high.

I got banned for posing this question on a different forum last week. Context....it's pretty important.

Ah, northern brothers who know what it's like to have real ice. I've got a 5 CFM pump but I only run it two 4 hours shifts per day, 8 hours total. My hole always freezes over when it gets below zero. When the temperature is in the 20'sF my hole will stay about 5 feet diameter. With temps in the 30's during the day it will open up to 10 to 15 feet. I generally do not have a problem when it freezes over because the air usually finds a way out. Some times it works it's way all the way to shore and comes out under the snow. On rare occasions it will not find a way out and then it can literally build up pressure. I can see my pressure gauges go up. The back pressure in my system is normally about 8 psi. If the air gets trapped under the ice the pressure has increased to as high as 12 to 13 psi. That's when you are literally lifting up the ice. I personally think this is the only problem you have to worry about is exceeding the pressure of your pump. I use a vane pump which is only designed for 15 psi max. Hopefully you have a relief valve on your system that will trip before you overheat your pump. I have had both the tall frozen foam chimney in my pond and the trapped air that blows a guyser when it vents. Just because of the pressure increase I will usually break the ice whenever I see it frozen over with no obvious point of escape. I simply take a 22 rifle and shoot a hole in the ice from shore. I rarely have more than 1 to 3 inches of ice over the hole. Something to consider is that maybe it's a good thing to have a bunch of air trapped under the ice. If you think about it, it exposes a larger portion of the surface of the pond to air with some oxygen in it. This can only help the diffusion of oxygen into the water I would think.
Funny story - once when I had the aerator off for a few days in December as the pond first froze over, about 3 inches of ice, very clear good ice, then I turned the aerator back on. I thought it would be interesting to watch how long it took the aerator to melt a hole in 3 inches of good ice. I waited all day. The aerator never melted a hole in the ice it instead just pumped air under the ice. The pressure gauge went up to 13 psi. The ice lifted up off the water. By late that night I had a 100 foot diamter bubble of ice that had raised the ice up about 2 feet in the center. I kept watching and my ice balloon just never broke. At about midnight I was tired of waiting so I got my 22 and shot out into the center. What resulted was a huge explosion. Apparently the ice was so tight that it literally blew up. My house is about 100 feet from the pond and my family said they heard the boom. When the ice bubble burst it shattered into a million pieces. The ice chunks flew 50 feet out of the pond. I was standing on my dock which sticks out about 12 feet from shore. I was soaking wet. My wife ran out of the house wondering what happened. I simply told her that I blew up the pond! It was cool, before I shot it I thought about taking a video but my camera had recently quit working so I had no way to film it. I swear it's a true story though.

Took me a second... I try to avoid ice holes, but they are pretty common around my neck of the woods.

That's one of the best stories ever!

I like that story bz. I read it on hear about a year ago in another thread. I have told it to some of my friends so it better be true cause I don't bs to my friends. JK I believe it. Scruffy how many cfm and how deep is your diffuser.

Wow...that is amazing. All that ice flying...be sure to wear some goggles next time...but by all means, make sure there IS a next time and video it for us? I love explosions!

My hole is so big I feel into it a week ago.

I wasn't going to allude to said event, but since you brought it up yourself...

How about a contest? Next year let's see who can get some pictures of an ice balloon and perhaps video of it exploding. I've tried to create those conditions again by letting the pond freeze early in the winter for one or two nights with no air. Then turn the air on and see what you get. The two times I tried the ice wasn't as good as the original time and it cracked after it rose up 3 or 4 inches. Then you just get the rushing are and geyser. But that could be a cool video too. Who can get the biggest geyser, or the biggest foam tower. Gotta think of ways to have fun with all this ice we have. I've never gotten an 8 foot foam tower, 3 feet is about my biggest.

I leave the aerator going 24/7 and the smallest that I've seen the hole is about 20' diameter. But, the weather isn't as cold as it is further North either!

Great story. Dang that would have been a good video.

Of course it did occur to me that if that had happened to me and I told the story no here would have believed it.

If it had been TomG, it would have been believable but not because of air pressure, we would be convinced that explosives were involved.

My ice hole is almost frozen over now. I can see the barely see the bubbles thru the ice. After reading the exploding post I don't think I'll be shooting anything at the hole. Must have been something to see. If it dosen't open up, I might throw a large rock at the area.

My pump is a low cfm and is about 6 feet under the surface with about 1 foot to 18" of ice on the rest of the pool now.

This was my ice hole 2 weeks ago after pumping 150,000 gal. to bring the pond up. It's was about 3' X 12' then, but I haven't been there for a week and the night temps have been below zero for the past week.

AP, mine was open about the same as yours (only round) a couple of weeks earlier. Checked again this moring and it is still frozen over. We are supposed to go back into the deep freeze again this weekend. I may have to get a rock ready to luanch.

I see your adding water again to your pond. I guess the soil teatment you did last summer didn't help with your leak? Where are you getting your water from, if your source dosen't flow in the winter?

It almost looks like you struck oil there AP.

Here toasting my feet by the pellet stove after coming in from the pond. Temp around 5 above, another cold night.

Ventured out on the ice with a crow bar to see if I could open the frozen over ice hole. Stabbed at the ice on the way out just incase I was were I shouldn't have been. Got to the area and couldn't see any bubbles, everything was frozen over.

Took a poke at the area and with two strikes broke through. The air comes gushing out and I poked again to open another hole. The white area disappears as the air rushs out, and the ice begins to crack, made me a little concerned for a moment. Then all the air eacapes and a small gyser of water comes rushing out. Poked around a couple of more times to open an area of about 2 feet in diameter, and the water is realing rolling.

I'm finding ponding is an adventure even in the winter. Saw a beautiful red fox as I was coming in for the pond, wish I had brought the camera.

This is the foam "loch ness monster"my earation made today. The top is about 4 feet tall. Today was a high of 14 F and my diffuser is in 13 feet of water.

I bought this through the forum and it was easy to install through the ice. You can see the round sticks I was using. The old ones were at around 10psi out of the water the new discs are at 10psi in 13feet. My air is running in the pic as you can see the membranes are inflated about 1/2"..

Mine's bigger then Yooooours! Nanny Nanny Boo Boo!





This is only a 0.8 cfm diaphram conpressor with one stone in about 4 feet of water. I shut it off it we don't get snow.

All right, Blair has got the foam monster contest started. Let's see if anyone can beat that one. Unfortunately this contest is only for those people living in subzero temps. I don't think the foam will freeze at higher temps. Dang, I've only had little ones this year, maybe 6 inches tall and 6 inches diameter. We had 25 degrees today so my hole is starting to open up and the foam monsters have all melted. I'm not wishing for more subzero temps just to win the contest though.

Cecil, you just live in too warm an area to even compete with the rest of us. The contest isn't for the largest hole, it's for who can stay frozen over even if you have a 10 cfm pump.

I gotta go check the temp now, just to see how miserable I should be when I go outside.

blair5002 that's some ice hole sculpture you got there, you must have a good size air pump, either that or your putting bubble bath into the hole.

Scruffy I'm pumping water from the stream above the waterfall when I'm at the pond and only if it's above 15 degrees. The pond is staying within 8 inches of full.
http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=199515#Post199515

It is only 3.4cfm I think. If it warms up the hole opens and the monster goes away but it is usually something like that. Last winter I put the aeration in in january and the water smelled like h2s for a long time. This year it been running steady and smells good.

Cecil, yours is that big only because you were swimming in it.

Shhhhhh!

Was about 32 deg. yesterday and 38 today. So my hole is getting larger. We also got 2" snow today. First pic is of me plowing the pond, second pic is my hole, nothing fancy, about 3 feet diameter now. was onloy 3 inches two days ago.

Maybe I can help make it bigger if I do it Cecil's way.

Where did all these northern guys go??? They were dealing with doming a decade ago! I want to talk about frozen foam towers! I have not seen that yet!