lesliew I have a pond that is about the same size as yours. I have a gravity filter that keeps my pond clear all year round. This filter is outside of the pond and it looks like a large utility tub. I have it sitting right next to my pond so I put a small fence in front of it to cover the front of it. This is how my system is set up: my water comes in from a garden size hose into a tube that is about 5 in diamiter ( I have a rock that holds the hose in place). The water then falls into the very bottom of the filter in comes up through a small grate,furnace filter, lava rock in bags, then roots of iris, water celery, anacharis, horn wort and out a 3 in tube that feeds back into the pond. I have a bottom drain that allows me to clean this filter out every spring. When I clean it in the spring I take out all the iris, chop them to pieces and give to any fellow ponder that will take them, hang on to a clump about 6 in in diamiter. throw away all water celery, it comes back anyway, replace lava rock. I buy the landscaping type just make sure you rinse them throughally before you put them in. Buy a new furnace filter at hd they are about 5.00 and worth every penny. The grate sits up about 4-5 in off the bottom so that allows all the fish poop and rotted stuff to settle in that area. When you go to clean out the filter you will want to save this sludge...it is black gold, my plants love it in the spring its like a energy drink for them. Once you put it back together you are done until next year. I do have to clean my pump about every 4-5 weeks but that is easy and takes about 10 min. I have pictures of my filter all taken apart that I can mail to you, they were not done on a dig camera, just let me know.

I'm new to these forums and wanted to say hello to you all before I asked my question. My wife and I just bought an old HUD home in West Michigan (North Muskegon) and are in the process of renovating it. All the plumbing to this house was shattered due to neglect and it froze.So I dropped a new well point down, replaced the pump with a 1 hp shallow well pump. The county engineer told me that there are two aquifers in my neighborhood one at about 25-30 ft and one at about 280 ft. The shallow one has the same water content as the deep aquifer but has iron in it as well according to him. So I decided to deal with the iron instead of paying 5-6k for the deep well. The neighbors have a deep well and they have the same issues as me. So what I would like is some advice as to how I can filter this and get good clean water for our soon to be newly remodeled home. All plumbing and water appliances will be new in this home. There will be 1-2 adults and probably one 3 year old a couple times a week. The house is 1400 sqft, 2 bed room & 1 bath. The new well pump is in a 5 ft deep cement walled and covered pit. I ran new 3/4 pex into the home thru a 2" conduit so I can change the pipe diameter if I need a larger size to get the GPM I need and not have to dig again. The 1st time was enough 50 ft long and 45" deep. It took me a week to get that accomplished. I have a new 40 gallon bladder thank with the pressure switch at the tank in the garage. The water coming out on the other side is where the 10 GPM was checked. I bought the house from Fanny Mae (paid cash) so I have no more mortgage. Woo Hoo. I'm just looking for some advice as to how I should proceed with filtering the water so it doesn't ruin all my hard work. The sinks and toilets that we removed was dark brown stained from the water so whoever had the house before us did not try to filter it. The water comes out tinted and has a funky smell to it. There is no sediment after the water sets for a day or so but it does change color a tad and the water smell gets worse. Below is what I got back from the test that Fanny Mae did on the water to check how safe it was to drink. It passed but I ask my family won't drink it the way it is or bath in it until it's cleaned. There was no other information other than what is shown below. - Iron 5.85 - Sodium 2.30 - Fluoride .10 - Chloride 1.39 - Sulfate 10.60 - Total Nitrite & Nitrate - E. Coli Absent - Total Coli-form Absent - Hardness (as CaCO3) 98.4 I really appreciate your time, I know how valuable it. Thanks!

Actually the above information is incorrect. When talking full rate pumps, none of the major manufacturers have a 1.5 hp 115V pump. 1.0 is the largest full rate that is convertable. As far as conserving energy goes there is no difference. You pay for your electricity by kilowatts. A SQ1102 1.0hp motor takes 9.6 amps at 230V Which is 2208 watts or 2.2KW. The same motor at 115V consumes 19.2 Amps and consumes the same 2.2 KW. The formula is Amps X Volts = Watts. The advantage of using a 230V motor is that you can use smaller wiring to go into the pump. At 19.2 amps you should have a #10 wire and a 25A or 30A Breaker. At 230V you can use a #14 and a 15 amp, or the more commonly used #12 230V. There is no need to put a 2 1/2" suction on a 1hp pump, especially not when you have a dedicated main drain and skimmer line. Getting back the original question, you are on the right path, but there is no reason that you need even a 1hp pump. To get a 6 hour turnover (overkill for residential) you need to move 24GPM. A 1/2 hp whisperflo should almost do double that. A 220sqft should be seriously overkill as it is for a pool of this size. You can always go larger, but I feel in 8900 gallons of water you would be wasting money. Godspeed on your new project. You will really like the whisperflo. I used a be a sta-rite fanatic, untill I started installing them. My only compliant is that they tend to need less service than the sta-rites.

The skimmer box can be any size you like, can even be a pond (skimmer between 2 ponds). The width of the weir door (flap) determines the pump size...kind of. Really pretty much any size pump will work with any reasonable width weir. Technically you could compute the amount of water desired over the weir. So say 12" wide weir at 1/8" deep is about 1.4 sq in of water which is about the size of a 1.5" pipe. Looking at a flow table for gravity to low flow (6'/sec) you'd need a 2100 GPH. With 1/16" over the weir a 1050 GPH pump, for 1/32" a 525 GPH pump. Lot's and lots of pond owners, including high end pond owners, believe, and will always believe, that the bigger the pump the more "powerful" the skimmer. I've also seen many posts from "experts" saying a waterfall is needed to push debris to the skimmer. That all ignores the physics of why a skimmer works which is based on surface tension. The thinner the water going over the weir the stronger the surface tension pulling debris into the skimmer. So the smaller the pump the greater the pull distance. That assumes a level weir and no leakage around the edges which isn't realistic. People wanting to spend a lot of money on a pond will pair a 4000 GPH pump with a 10" weir and it will indeed pull stuff into the skimmer so they assume a huge pump is needed, or is better. It isn't. But it's impressive to people impressed by excess which this hobby can certainly be about. Bottom line if you use a 500 GPH pump or bigger and a 10-12" weir you should be OK. And that single skimmer will clear the surface of even a 25x35' pond. Stuff may get hung up on sides, but no skimmer can deal with that. And on windy days stuff may blow away from the skimmer which again a bigger pump isn't going to solve. Really skimmer design generally has much more to do with the owner and how knowledgeable and/or if their goal is to have lots of equipment. If you make a skimmer the main thing to get right are getting the walls and floor where the weir is installed to be square and walls parallel so as the weir moves up and down there a minimal gap between the weir and wall. Messing that up then requires a larger pump to overcome the loss around the edges. The corrugated plastic makes getting the weir door perfect pretty each since it's so easy to cut. Trim the edges that move against the wall at 45 degrees instead of 90 degrees so the final trim is just a single layer of thin plastic.