Pond Boss Forums INTRO New Forum Member Introduction Problem with Clogging Overflow Pipe

Hello Pond Boss! I am a newbie here on this site as far as logging in for the first time. I have been reading and finding great information here for the last 2 years since I started my new pond construction and it has been a good deal of help. So let me get to the question: I built a new pond around 1.5 acres in size and we ran a 6" overflow pipe through the dam and it works great, except in the fall when all the leaves come down and clogs the overflow pipe. The emergency 18" pipes have been used a few times when this pipe clogged up which is ok, I guess. Is there anything homemade or something I could purchase to suck water underneath, so the leaves don't cause problems. I should have considered a bottom pond drain now, but it's a little late I guess. Any help or photo's of what has been done would be greatly appriciated. I will add a couple of photo's of the pipe when it was in construction mode. Thanks!

For some reason I am unable to add photos. Tell me the file size is over 2mb, but I have reduced the size of the image to 131k, so it should load, but no luck. I see what I need to do to add photo's and will do so later.

Hey KJ
Perhaps something along these lines, but on a smaller scale and with closer spaces verts...? Rockytopper talked me into this one a long time ago and it has performed flawlessly. Admittedly, though, I have had to remove very little debris since it's installation simply because I don't get that much crap blown in and floating.
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OTOH, though, Dave Davidson would be the first to point out that a small brush pile will be the perfect natural filter...seriously. If you had a smaller tree branch with numerous smaller branches, or a bundle of them, and staked them over the pipe inlet, I think you would have a suitable homeopathic trickle pipe filter.

Thanks for the feedback. I was thinking about something like this installed on top of my 6" pvc pipe. Would something like this work ok on the link below? It's called Round Hole Steel Strainer (not banjo)

http://www.banjovalves.com/strainers.aspx

When I say leaves, I mean the entire pond is surrounded by large oak trees and they come down by the hundreds in the fall.

Be very careful with use of strainers. They clog easily.
The idea with the design presented offers 2 advantages. The first; a large filter area. The second, and likely the best engineering, as the water level rises during a heavy rain, so does the debris that has collected. This will allow a flow of water to continue moving below the debris mass.

Might be too late for the hooded inltet since my pond is totally full now. I would like to put something on top of the 6" PVC drain pipe if possible.

Is it a vertical standpipe in the pond? If so you can put a larger diameter pipe over the top and it will force the water to come up from the bottom of the bigger pipe. This keeps the floating leaves from going down your pipe. A trash rack is the technical term for it, I believe. I asked a similar question a while back. Though I was asking for a way to pull off bad (anoxic) water. Keeping leaves out is an added bonus. Here's a link to the thread: http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...7681#Post217681

Thanks! This is exactly what I am talking about. The pipe is a vertical pipe sticking up out of the deepest part of the dam. I have a hard time explaining things via email, sorry about that. The leaves build up around the pipe and I have to get out there usually when it is raining like crazy and the pipe is clogged and clean it so water can get back to flowing properly. Is there any photo's of this trash rack you are speaking of?

well, that's a pipe of a different color

Nathan to the rescue...

When I was looking at what to get I found this website that sells them: http://www.ponddampiping.com/accessories1.html It's the second item on the page. I ended up just using a 10" PVC pipe over my 6" metal pipe. The pic below just looks like a PVC pipe sticking up out of the ground. But there's actually a metal pipe inside of it. I cut some holes near the bottom of the PVC pipe to let the water in.
The drain pipe has been leaning for as long as I remember. My grandma says it started leaning soon after it was put in. But it hasn't moved since then (20something years) so I'm planning to leave it leaning for now.

Thanks Nathan! You hit the nail on the head with that website link. I might try to make one, shouldn't be all that hard, huh.

Sounds like you've got it figured out, but here is what I did on my smaller ponds, especially my previous trout pond where water was constantly overflowing out. I would think you could do it on larger ponds on a bigger scale.

In the trout pond I had a problem with floating algae clogging up the screen, and of course leaves in the fall. I built a floating boom that was made of PVC in a 'U' shape that floated in front of the outlet. The closed end of course faces out. Any floating debris gets backed up against the PVC, but would still allow the water to still get through.

I wish I had a picture but haven't used it lately as the three smaller ponds are no longer flow through ponds. My biggest pond has an emergency overflow only as I don't trust putting pipes through dikes.