Gentlemen (:>)

I am about to install my aeration system (3 diffusers). Any tips out there? I have weighted tubing, membrane diffusers, and power at the dock.

I heard someone say to put floats on the diffusers, but I am not sure what that buys me. I think once THEY are down, they are DOWN.

Any advice is appreciated.

Jerry Gabrovic
Brashear, TX

Hi Jerry,
I am new here too, from what I gather, it is an aid to locate and retrieve the diffusers for inspection ect tra, On the pond photo's I have seen though, I have not noticed very many "bouy's" over the bubbles.

I tied a nylon rope to the diffuser to assist in lowering to the bottom and left it attached. The rope is tied to the opposite side of the pond from the pump.....just in case I do need to raise it.

P.S. My pond is only 150' wide where I have the aerator installed.

The easiest way is to place the compressor and cabinet. Then lay out the tubing on shore in a manor so it will not kink on you as you pull the diffuser out to your desired location.

Our install team likes to use the floats to indicate the final location of the diffuser before pulling the lines out. This gives you a point of refernce to aim for. They simply use a three hole brick tied to a 1/2 gal. milk jug for this.

Once you have your desired locations marked, make sure your diffuser is weighted. Place the diffuser in the boat. Work with the wind, much easier. Back the boat up to the desired diffuser location. It helps if you have a long run and a small motor ont he boat to have a friend feed the weighted tubing out as you reverse to the location.

Once at the site, some diffusers like ours and others have holes in the base to thread a line through to lower it to the bottom. This ensures that the unit does not invert on you and end upside down in the muck. If it does, the boil will look like a donut and you will most likely see a black ring with a rotten egg smell from the muck being moved.

Repeat for your other three diffusers. As Western stated, some leave a float or duck decoy attached to inspect and move around. If you are using the weighted tubing and you do not have too many snags on the bottom, you could simply pull it to shore and repeat the above steps to replace it.

If the pond is small enough, one can do this without a boat by using those holes on the diffuser base and walk around to the opposite side of the lake and pull the diffuser to the desired location. Then simply pull the line out of the holes.

I assume this is your own set up. All of us manufactures have install manuals with our systems. I would be glad to email one to you if you need it.

****WARNING**** This time of year, make sure you follow start up procedures. See post from yesterday about the all of the catfish that died.

Jerry:

I have a mallard decoy tied to the bucket my airstone is in. Since it's hard to turn off a windmill in the Winter to prevent supercooling, I use the line tied to the decoy to move the airstone to shallow water.