Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? House well pump

My 1/2 Acre pond is finished, It have about 2' of muddy water in it right now since there's no grass growing around it yet. We ran a pipe from the house well pump to use for keeping it full. How long can I run the pump before it will do damage to it? I haven't done any calculations on how much water I still need to fill it up or how many gallons per minute my pump puts out but I'm sure it going to need to runs for a few days straight.

While doing your calculations, there are just under 326,000 gallons per acre foot of water. If your house well pumps 15 gallons a minute (that is a lot for a house pump) assuming no seepage or evaporation the well will have to run 7.5 days straight to fill it 1 foot.
My well is much larger and I run it up to 15 days at a time without any problems.
I know this does not answer your question but gives you an idea of just how much water it takes to have an impact on a pond

I think taking good care of your pump and well should take priority over the speed of filling the pond.

Bad things happen if you pump long enough to let your well run dry. The pump components will wear out more quickly if it starts pumping some air with the water. Even worse, if your water level goes below the top of your perforations, then you may start to have some silt infiltration into your well casing. This may eventually fill up your well to the perforations and running sediment through the pump will really shorten its life!

Do you know your actual pump type? If so, I would look it up and see if the manufacturer describes the designed duty cycle. If the pump stays cool, it would probably be better to run continuously for three hours, compared to running for ten minutes and having 18 pump start cycles over the same period of pumping. (I pulled those numbers out of thin air.) Because startups are typically more work for pumps than continuous duty (as long as your continuous duty isn't too long).

I would definitely run a bucket test on your pump at some location where you have easy access. Get the time to fill a container of known volume and then calculate your gallons per minute. Then you can get a decent estimate of your pumping requirements to fill the pond.

Finally, is your pond also going to capture some surface run-off, or is it going to rely 100% on well water?

Congratulations on your new pond. I hope you enjoy all of the fun stuff that goes with having a pond.

P.S. I would immediately start getting your groundcover seeded over your bare dirt. Every big rain that washes dirt into your pond is going to "steal" depth from the pond that you just paid good money to construct.

Also, are you going to put in any structure for fish, spawning beds, or a dock? That is all much easier to do before the pond is full.

Looks like I'll just wait for the May showers!! Thank you for the reply. That will give the grass time to come up, right now the water looks like chocolate milk.I keep waiting for a Hippo to emerge from it!

If you land one of those, I believe you will break the Pond Boss record for heaviest catch!

It all depends on your aquifer. My well pumps between 25 and 30 gpm and I ran it continuously from early December to early April. The aquifer here can support over 2,000 gpm if I wanted to have a bigger well, well pump and pay the utility bill. I believe my well pump is 1 hp. It isn't that deep, only 63' to the bottom of the well casing and the head is only 13' below the surface of the ground.

I'm going back up next Friday to chase a few turkeys around, maybe I'll run it over the weekend and see how much I gain