Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Siphon How-To?

Your ratio is of as all that counts is what is below the water line. The end of the pipe must be deep enough not to have a vortex. The only thing I can think of to stop that is an elbow pointed down.

Let me explain my thought. IF you can get the 4" donkey dong to glue to the 3" fitting (it will go over the outside of the bell) and get it to seal. What I would do is glue it deep so the end of the pipe comes past the bell section, then I would pour glue in the grove and let it dry. Put a T in the middle at your high point wit a 4 foot stub pointed up. Glue a coupling on both ends and put on threaded caps.

From the top of the T have a pipe sticking straight up about 4 feet. Fill the system from the vertical pipe. when the water is near the top of that glue on a cap. Glue the pipe and the cap, you should see a bead form as you slip it on. That pipe is your air trap now.

Go to the pond end and keeping the pipe under water, remove the threaded cap. Go to the bottom and pull you P trap in, then remove the cap. You may have to tie a concrete block to it to maintain the P trap.

As far as where the pond end is, put it in deep. Take a yard stick and walk out and drive it into the mud. Count how much time it takes to drop an inch, then you can about figure when you need to check it again.

Break the siphon, just cut the cap off.

I currently have an elbow pointed down on the pipe. Still getting a vortex. I'd say the pipe is at least 12" under water. Hard to tell with the refraction.

I'm gonna' weigh in with a hillbilly method.....we used to drain the HBG pond every year, using rigid, 4" pvc pipe. Our setup sounds very similar to what cold is describing, with the exception that we didn't glue all the joints. We needed to be able to disassemble the contraption and store it, between uses. That's hard to do with a 70' piece of pipe.

The joints that we didn't glue, we simply wrapped tightly with Saran wrap. Don't laugh, it worked for years.

We ran a 3' piece of 2" pipe off of a T, placed where the vertical section coming out of the pond met the horizontal section going across the dam. The 2" pipe contained a valve, was capped on the end, and a barbed hose fitting of about 1/4" or so was threaded into the cap. To start the siphon we used an engine cleaning wand....the kind that attaches to compressed air and has a suction hose to apply detergent. We used a gasoline powered air comp. to provide the pressure.

To cap off the pipe on the downhill side, we jammed in 2 liter soda bottles. As I recall, they were a near perfect fit. We did wrap that joint in Saran wrap also however. A quick cut with a pocket knife and that bottle would come flying out once the pipe was filled.

To start the siphon, we hooked the wand's detergent hose to the barbed fitting, connected the air comp. to the wand, fired up the comp, and just squeezed the trigger on the gun. When water sprayed out of the wand's tip, the pipe was full. Close the valve, uncork the bottom, and away it went. It took longer to tell about it than it did to do it. We actually loaned this setup out to a couple of other folks who wanted to drain their ponds down.

By the way...trying to feed rigid lengths of 4" pvc out into deeper water can be difficult, as the pipe tries to sink to the bottom and gets very heavy. Capping that end with a soda bottle will make the job much easier, provided someone is willing to go out there and remove the bottle and allow the pipe to sink, once in position.

Very ingenious, Sparky-I've done the same with 3", minus the Saran wrap...

I am seriously starting to worry about your self esteem, however.

Good plan. Lets adapt it to the donkey dong. Fill t with water with the seam sideways. Locate any leaks and wrap them with shrink wrap. Glue the fittings in and also wrap them with shrink
wrap.