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cicadidae

Waterbug guy's vacuum idea

cicadidae
9 years ago

I was reading all of the stuff on Waterbug guy's page and am happy to have learned so many awesome things (I am no longer nervous about tree roots and will no longer succomb to the bacteria in a bottle snake oil sellers).
One of the things mentioned was the use of a pool pump to vacuum the guck off of the bottom of a pond. My pond is biggish, 45'x23' and cleaning it is a chore. I now have a spare pool pump and I am wondering if I could get more information on how to set this up? I was kind of thinking about maybe permanently setting up the pump on one side in the middle and alloting sufficient hosing to vacuum the entire pond. I am guessing that leaf removal comes first and then this but I am not sure what season is best or how often it should be done. The pond is 2 years old and contains two large catfish, four large koi and their numerous offspring...hopefully some of which are awaiting assassination by the catfish mafia.

Comment (1)

  • waterbug_guy
    9 years ago

    Swimming pools and some ponds have a skimmer that a pump is connected to suck water into the skimmer. In swimming pools the hole for the pipe perfectly fits those flexible swimming pool hoses. So when the pump is on it sucks the hose right into place. That's how the Silt Vac works.

    The Muck Mop is connected to the pump's output.

    Some pool pumps are self priming, meaning they can be started above the pond's water line. But I assume your's isn't self priming. That means the pipe going into the pump has to be full of water. This is normally done by mounting the pump a little below the pond's water line. But that also means the input pipe can't go over the side of the pond, it has to go thru the pond wall below the water line. That can be done with a bulkhead fitting if you have a liner. Pretty easy, a little digging.

    There are ways to get the pipe go over the side of the pond, but it takes more valves and you have to fill the pipe with a garden hose or bucket of water. That's a pain. Plus the bulkhead fitting is way cheaper than the valves.

    I would protect the pump from sun and weather. Some don't have to be but I would.

    Once you have the pipe thru the liner the Silt Vac can connect to that. Air has to be removed from the hose first. So you connect the hose to the Silt Vac and let that sink (with the pole of course) and then push the rest of the hose below the water so it fills with water and air escapes the loose end of the hose. Keep doing that until you have the loose end under water and connect to the pump's input.

    The Muck Mop is connected to the pump's output.

    The pool pump is probably way more power than you need for the Muck Mop. You can ad a valve on the pump's output to adjust, doesn't harm the pump. But put the valve as far away from the pump as you can. You can drill bigger holes, and more of them in the Muck Mop nozzle to allow more power. This does have to be balanced by the mesh bag. Water has to be able to escape the bag so too fine a mesh net and/or too much water from the pump can cause the vac not to work. I used to sell a fine mesh bag because people really wanted that, but it didn't really work better. The shade cloth was way better, more power. Fine bags catch smaller stuff but clog the bag so you have to clean out more which is no good.

    The Silt Vac would because it's basically the same as a swimming pool vac. But it would remove more water from the pond than needed, so the valve on the output could be used to control that too.

    The Muck Mop is the real work horse. Since no water is lost you can take your time, pretty relaxing. If you use that say once a month in summer you can greatly reduce the need for the Silt Vac. Silt Vac is normally more of a once a year deal. Always use the Muck Mop first to get the big stuff that will clog the Silt Vac.