Patti,

Your pond is absolutely gorgeous!!!!!! Your filter design is great, and blends so beautifully with the landscape. What is that huge fantastic plant behind your waterfall?

Regards,
Lisa

Thanks Lisa. The plant is ornamental rhubarb. Yardy for this area so comes back every year. I am not sure if the leaves are poisonous (rhubarb is) so I check regularly to see that the leaves are not sitting in that waterfall filter. The deck was a real challenge to build as has so many lift out panels but beats walking between the framing which is what I did for the last three years!

Patti, lovely setting and pond.
I have a similar set up with a trapdoor in my deck that allows access to my sump/pre-filter 45 gallon drum, where the pumps are located. That way I have nothing showing in the ponds, except for the bottom drain and skimmer, that gravity feed water into the drum.
The water is then pumped from the sump/pre-filter drum, up to my filter, located behind my workshop and then gravity flows again, back to the pond via the waterfall.
I like the idea of keeping everything out of sight.
I do like the way you did your decking. You have worked hard on your pond project and it looks great.
"Horton"

What size was your settling chamber? Did it fill from a bottom drain or a surface skimmer? Last for now,how big flow rate did your external pump push from this SC to your falls?
Thanks for the info because your setup is the closest to what mine is turning out to be and I want to be sure I don't under size the SC.

Wow, looks beautiful!

Thanks everyone. rferg my sc measures 42" square inside dimensions, 42" deep in the center but the bottom is "coned" to the centre--a foot up from the bottom. It holds 300 gals metered but that is to max full on my pond which is actually 6 inches down from the top edge of the sc. This is only because I set the savio skimmer too low--if it was set higher I could fill my pond more. Pond is 2500 gals metered max full. Pump is Sequel 4250GPH. The sc draws from a retrofit bd, (over the liner) 4" line reduced to 3" just after going through the pond wall. Reduced as 3" gate valves are cheaper. My pump draws from both the skimmer and sc. When both are running I think they balance out. If I run only the sc it draws down too quickly--might get air in pump. I think this is because my bd is not sitting down tight on the liner and maybe because the valve on the outside of the chamber (before the pump) is leaking. There's not alot of flow rate/loss on the out of the pump as is 2 lines each 2". If I remember correctly from Mikes calculations my flow at the waterfalls is about 3600 GPH with head/friction loss but that's split between the two falls. My flow on waterfalls is less than I'd like because I have two fairly large falls. I'll take a picture and post of just running one fall. Because the sc valve is leaking and I have my old Sequence pump that works but has a bent shaft so leaks when you first start it up and flow is reduced a little on it that I'm thinking of switching the plumbing out next spring and run the two pumps--one on the skimmer and one on the sc.Oh and I want one of those Aquaart retrofit bd as are supposed to be the best for over the liner.Long story short--when looking at pumps look at what flow you want on your waterfall. It's easy to valve the flow down on the outside (can't reduce on in!) but if you don't have enough flow you're stuck with that.