I purchased and installed a PondLyfe 2 system 19 months ago and it's been working well with no issues since. This morning, I came out to an unusual "lily pad" at the edge of my pond and some gurgly ruckus in the center of the water surface. Come to find out (and I have no idea why), the membrane pad on one of the diffusers snapped at the mounting threads. Has anyone ever seen this happen before to a pad that has been undisturbed at the bottom of a pond? (ie. no humans, livestock, etc could have stepped on it)

The pond is between 7.5 and 8 feet deep at the deepest part and where these pads were sitting. They were placed before the pond was filled, so it couldn't have been damage during install. Best I can figure is there was some sort of tiny crack or defect from the get go and it took a year and a half of running air through it for it to grow and eventually snap. Thoughts and ideas?

I love that Vertex system and I can't wait to get this pad back online.

Cheers!
Clayton

Call or email them with a picture, they should replace that part. That looks like schedule 80 PVC.

I had a similar problem today. Was up at my pond and saw large bubbles coming up with some small ones. Pulled up the diffuser and the elbow was cracked. This diffuser had been under water for over a year so I don't know how it happened.

I will email vertex to see what they say.

Its kinda hard to tell with the shadow in the picture but the break looks pretty clean..if there was an existing crack I wondering if there would have been some discoloration at the crack even though bubbles could prevent it.. i'm just thinking outloud

Neglecting poor elbow quality, I would say that both KapH and Twar's failure was the result of the diffuser taking a hit to the top on the side and in the direction of the light blue arrow. This would have produce a torque that resulted in a force in the direction of the black arrow at the elbow. This force could have caused a crack to start at the red arrow. This might have happened at any time during assembly, shipping, and/or installation. A very small crack that would be undetectable to begin with could propagate with the vibrations caused by the bubbling of the diffuser until it just gave way.

It's not likely that the cause was from over-tightening UNLESS the threads from the horizontal pipe bottomed out inside the elbow or hit the threads from the vertical nipple of the head. Not likely unless poorly designed from the elbow manufacturer. This is hard to tell without the broken parts in my hands. Can you tell if either threads bottomed out or hit each other?



I recently had a failure on my DIY Vertex base where the PVC nipple broke due to the rope I use to retrieve the diffuser. The rope tied to the upright nipple produced a similar torque below the head. Luckily the nipple broke ($3) and not the diffuser threads.

If the elbow is threaded onto the horizontal pipe, it could be replaced with one form the hardware store I would think.

Has anyone put a diffuser in a pool or something to see how much vibration there is when running? It may help to put a piece of sponge or foam between the feed pipe and the diffuser edge to dampen vibrations.

I have not aerated a swimming pool for vibration observations but would bet that the vibrations are small in magnitude and high in frequency. By themselves, the vibrations would be negligible; meaning that a system in good condition should be able to handle them. Add a micro-crack and now the vibrations add to its demise (along with any temp changes & cycling of the air pump/pressure changes).

It's just odd that I haven't even pulled it up in a year and deep underwater it somehow cracked.

I pull mine in with the diffuser hose. Not the best idea but it works.

My first thought was I had over tightened the diffuser or something, but the crack doesn't go all the way up the threads.

I just cut off the one arm and capped it for the time being. I was going to take off one of the diffusers for my hypolimnetic aeration project anyways and I am only pushing a little over 1 CFM through the base and remaining diffuser.

Is the hose weighted? How do you keep it on the bottom of the pond? It seems unlikely, but maybe the hose sank faster than the diffuser wanted to.. I’m grasping at straws. Maybe it froze once upon a time?

Weighted hose, but that pull down can't be any stronger than the lift up when the diffuser swells up with air. It couldn't have frozen due to depth underwater. I kept it deep all winter, just didn't run it.

Since there are only 2 of us with the problem it is likely just a rare defect. That pvc is thick and under any normal use should not break. I know mine was not abused so the logical explanation is a defect in the pvc. What caused it to finally give out after a year underwater is another question. I was just happy that the membrane wasn't blown out. Pvc is easy to fix or replace.