Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Full Pool......

Finally. I bet it's been close to a year since I had water going over the spillway.

How about the rest of you that were in draught areas?

Huzaa!!!!!!

I wish. Still about 7 feet low.

Like esshup, in parts of upstate NY we have been in drought with zero surface runoff for 6 mo. My new pond is 5.5ft below full and all it would take is 2" of runoff from the watershed to fill it.

Still about 3 1/2' low here in the middle of Misery.

Has only come up about 6 inches from record low. my 2 acre pond is still about 5 1/2 foot low here in deep east Texas!!

About 3 feet low here in SE Kansas.

About 5 ft low on big pond. 4 ft on smaller one and my spring fed creek has stopped running.

We were at about 2 1/2' below full pool after finishing the last of the excavation in late August (wet hole/spring situation). We've had a few good rains since & the water's come back up about a foot. If last year's a reliable indicator, it'll be full well before it warms back up.

Nearly 2’ low here in Ohio. Next summer I’m going to install a 3” Harbor Freight trash pump 300’ away ito draw from the neighbors stream and bury smooth wall 3 inch drain line to my ponds edge. A 5 gal gas can will feed the pump. I figure 5 gallons of gas will run the pump 12 hours and lift my 1 acre pond about 6 inches per tank. Figure the sub-$1000 investment will be worth always having a near- full pond to enjoy instead of praying to the rain gods 9 months a year.

Will be sure to use a filter sock on the outlet pipe to eliminate and intrusion of life from the stream.

We gained about 6 inches back with 4" of rain from late October, but still about 18" below full pool here in Central Iowa.

If you set the pump a hair above idle, the 3" pump will run for over 24 hours by using a 6 gallon gas can. The pumps with the Honda motor are quieter than the Predator pumps.

Do you think running the pump at lower RPM moves more water per gallon of gas?

Yes but that wasn't the goal of running it slower. At the very least it allowed me to stay ahead of the water that was coming into the pond via ground water seeing that it was running 24 hours a day vs less than 18 hours a day and keep lowering the water level in the pond at the same time. It allowed me to just fill the gas tank once per day since the pond was a half hour drive one way and not have to re-start/re-prime the pump. I used an old metal outboard motor gas tank that held a hair over 6 gallons. I found that I had to put the bottom of the metal tank at the same height or slightly higher than the stock tank. I brazed a fitting into the tank at the bottom with a shutoff valve on it and a barbed fitting that fit the fuel line and disconnected the regular tank. A regular Outboard motor tank with the top mounted fuel line would not keep siphoning - it would leak a bit of air and the siphon would stop before running 8 hours.

IIRC it took 8 days of running it like that to drain a 1 ac pond that had a max depth of 12'.

If the Predator engine is one of those cheap China made import motors I would stay away from it. Parts will not be found when you need them . I agree and would go with a Honda or a Briggs and Stratton. Really, anything with a "name brand" engine. At least your local small engine repair business can work on it. I owned a small engine business for 30 years and things are NOT like they used to be. Many of the gas powered generators you buy today you cannot even buy a carburetor kit for them. You have to throw it away and purchase a new carb.! If ...you can find one!! Just my 2 cent worth. Be careful what you buy. Also,on another note...these engines are AIR COOLED and most are designed to run at around 3600RPM to achieve maximum horse power and to stay cool. That would be FULL THROTTLE. Good luck with your purchase.

Still about 3' low. I'm thinking hard about how to keep more water when conditions allow.

That is a painful loss of water, or did it ever get filled? If I recall this is a new pond. I treated with SoilFloc the previous two years and was sad this year when we got down 18" despite this. However, it never got as low as it had in prior years when it wasn't as dry as this year. Also realized that some nearby ponds that I never saw get low were down several inches as well. Definitely a dry year and thinking without the SoilFloc things would have been much worse. There was a year that my pond got down 3ft below full despite being a normal rain year.

Our level is finally going up, and hoping it tops off soon, otherwise rising water and ice will float off my dock! The ground had finally saturated enough for a small spring to SLOWLY lift the level up, maybe 1/4 inch per day at the most.

Glad you got your spring back. I think that is excellent news!

We had 2" of rain at the farm, and decent rain in most of the watershed of our creek. Surprisingly, the creek still did not start flowing. Our soils are obviously very, very dry.

Our little creek across the back of the property is flowing again, so I expect the springs feeding the pond will start slowly bringing it back up.