Lesliew There is some very good and very bad advise given here. First let me address the question of to clean or not to empty pond for cleaning. First I have seen no where that your pond has a bare liner anywhere, in fact you say you have a lot of gravel on the bottom. So I have to assume that the liner is covered with rock. If this is the case than you are building up debri in this rock that can not be removed by vacuuming. It normally can only be removed by emptying and pumping it out. Does this have to be removed? That depends on where you live and how you keep the pond in the winter. If you live somewhere the pond gets covered with ice than chances are that you will have a problem one winter. Can I tell you when this will happen? No that depends on a lot of different factors such as fish load, debri in pond, how a hole is kept in the ice, what state the debri in the pond is in, and how long the ice is on the pond. Is cleaning a pond hard on the pond? Yes but the killing of all the fish is harder on the owner. Do you need to add bacteria to the pond? This answer is going to start a lot of debate but here goes. If you have a pond that is covered in rock than you should add it as the manufacture suggests. If you live some where that you get ice on the pond than it becomes more important. Than it also depends on how good you are at keeping debri out of the pond. The main purpose of added bacteria is to break down debri in the pond smaller so that the bacteria that naturally occurs in the pond break it down to a point where it is not a problem. It does this far quicker than the bacteria in the pond can do it. The real problem comes from what type of bacteria in the pond is breaking this debri down. If the bacteria isn't getting any O2 than the bacteria that breaks the debri down produces some very nasty gases. These gases are what will kill the fish. Should I clean the pond with the fish in it? This depends on weather or not you have the bacteria that is producing these nasty gases and how fast you clean it. If you stir up this debri so that the gases are released faster than the pond can expell these gases thru the surface of the pond then the fish will be affected by these gases. Do I need a biological filter? Again this depends on several factors. Natural lakes and ponds don't have additional filters and they don't have problems. But that isn't quite true. Yes they do not have additional filters on them but nature keeps the fish load to what the body of water with the addition of fresh water can support. This is done by the amount of food that is available, concretations of natural chemicals that the fish put in the water gets high enough they stop reproducing and growing, and if all else fails fish kill offs. In the normal garden ponds these are controled. Fish are fed and water is changed so the fish load can quickly get higher than what the pond can support. Than what happens? Very simply you have fish die offs. I am sorry to be so windy but I waded into this thread not because of your situtation but because of other people that may read this thread and get some bad information. From what you have written you probably would not have a problem following the advise given on this thread but another ponder could have some very bad problems following it. Mike

I suspect all of us have had our Bradford pear tree whether we will admit it or not, simply because they can be quite beautiful and in our area even the municipality planted them as street trees. Most of them are long gone, and self destructed. LOL. You can always let him enjoy it until it reaches the point it also self-destructs and you have to shell out three to four figures to have it professionally removed. A farmer down the road from us had one (prolly the parent to the ones in my woodlot) and it lived to a ripe age, as Bradfords go. It was just breathtaking in spring. It really was. It just 'shattered' in a storm. Looked like someone dropped a bomb on it. And it was respectably large when it did and took some effort to clean up. I can understand his reaction to the suggestion of a group of folks in the internet neither of you know. I left a mulberry tree grow on a property I owned in town on a city lot, and knew better. It overhung a property on a lower terrace level and I am ashamed now that I chose the privacy it provided instead of considering it was where they parked their cars. I ended up having to remove it when it started eating up the roof and dropping berries in my gutters. I got by cheap at four hundred bucks, when I could done it a few years early with my own drain spade.

Where are you getting your concerns about SFR? Do you think your pump can't keep up? Low water flow? Not sure what your research has shown but I know of only one or two people on the internet who use SRF religiously. Although it can be an issue under extreme cases, in most situations it is not. In fact SRF is really only relevant immediately after regeneration. And if you follow the advice of many to rate your softener to regen every 8-10 days (till full max capacity), then what started out as 12 gpm SFR is reduced to next to nothing prior to it regenerating. My advice is to regen more often at a lower salt dosage to reduce the chances of hardness bleed through. If the dealer did an adequate job in selecting the appropriate equipment, mentioning the actual cubic feet of resin in the softener (along with dozens and dozens of other technical datum) is not necessary unless you ask and they don't want to tell you. Then I would be a little concerned, but the vast majority of new customers have little interest or knowledge of those details. If you want to know, simply call the dealer and ask---he should be more than happy to give you all the tech info you request. After seeing thousands of customers, I have practically never had one ask me about the volume of resins, even when doing upgrades or changing from single tank to twin tanks or vice versa. Of course if they ask, I would explain. When I got estimates for AC units, I never asked what the BTUs were or what compression settings were going to be. I just wanted to be sure it did the job. The FLECK is a reliable valve and there are others on the market that also do great work.

Thanks for the thoughts. I'm still debating. I'm not sure about getting more cabinets (uppers) - not sure how many extra $$ that would be. We are getting pretty traditional raised panel cabs (stained maple) with a fairly substantial crown -- I really wanted them flush with the ceiling but I guess I can think of leaving space above to preserve the 9 footers. Of course, that may be moot if we need to move some piping . . . (ah, the mystery stuff you find in an old house). Just as an aside, town records indicated that the part of the house we are remodeling (an addition to the 1890 structure) was put up in 1958-can't see how that is judging by the scary old stuff we've discovered!