I have a pondmaster60 and it is very quiet, it has a defuser as well with 12 outlets I just sink it and let the bubbles roll. The first pump I got from pondmaster kept over heating and shutting off when it cooled it came on again. We contacted the dealer and they said to trash it and sent us a new one. This one works great it takes care of both ponds as I adapted it to use both defusers one for each pond. Contact the place you got it from! cant hurt and they might just be able to solve your problem.

Cindy, I like your home made grates for the end of your return pipes. I will have to remember that those in case I ever need something like that. I would do away with those but they do add friction to the flow of the system. Since these are DYI there are no exact measurements on these but I would guess that they are the same as 6 ft of pipe. So let's calculate the friction on your return lines. First we have water going from the drum into the 4" pipe. So we have 4 ft of the diameter of the drum and 2 ft of the 4" pipe for water to move from a larger pipe to a smaller pipe. The drum is large enough that four ft of it won't amount to any friction to worry about. But the 2 ft of 4" we will look at. Then we have a 45 elbow which is the same as 5 ft of 4" pipe. Then we also have 90 elbow which is the same as 12 ft of 4" pipe. Then we have the Ferco fitting. I am going to assume that the pipes inside the Ferco fitting are tight against each other and are in a straight line and this is the same as 4 ft of 4" pipe. Then we have the pipe expanding in the pond and this is 4 ft. of the 4" pipe and 2 ft of the diameter of the pond which will be about nothing. Then we have a 4 ft of pipe and a 3 ft of pipe. So each of the return lines are as follows: 6+2+5+12+4+4+4+3=40 ft of 4" pipe. So that short length of 7 ft of pipe is actually with fittings and changes in pipe sizes equals the same as 40 ft pipe. So the question is how much flow do we get by gravity through 40 ft of a 4" pipe with 1" of head? We actually get 3146 gph per return and we have 2 returns so the actual flow back to the pond would be 6292 gph. But I would guess that the head pressure is less than 1" so if I look at .5" head pressure we have flow for each return of 2156 or a total flow 4312 gph. So I would guess that when you actually take a good measurement of the head pressure you are going to find that it is a little more then .75 inch. .75 inch would have a flow of 5302 gph. Mike

Hi Jack --- Its an interesting idea, isnt it? Wybe Kuitert suggests it might have been a Chinese priest named Lanqi Daolong. In addition to what Wybe said in a lecture about Tenryuji, here are some excerpts from "Themes in the History of Japanese Garden Art" on the subject (from pp. 81-82): "Many writers on Japanese garden art ascribe the garden [Tenryuji] to Muso Kokushi. This attribution starts with a popular eighteenth-century garden book (Kitamura 1735) and is also found in an old tourist book on the celebrated gardens and sights of Kyoto (Akisato 1799). "Theories of Song landscape painting are skillfully applied in the waterfall arrangement of rocks at the pond shore. Generally speaking this rather sudden appearance of Song-influenced rock work cannot be ascribed to an indigenous Japanese like Muso. Muso himself could not have had such detailed knowledge; and he did not paint; and he never went to China. Besides, Song landscape painting was not yet being imported on a large scale "The appearance of Song-painting-inspired rock work in Tenryuji, then, is too sudden to be ascribed to an indigenous Japanese. Besides the waterfall arrangement, the concept of pond and hillock with winding pathways in between rows of rocks used as retainers is so typically Chinese in concept that one also hesitates on this point to attribute it to an early medieval Japanese. Another reason to attribute the design to a Chinese artist is the so-called carp stone halfway up the waterfall.. At the side of the upper step of the waterfall is a curved stone with a split tip, quite suggestively representing a fish jumping the rapids. It is generally accepted that this stone relates to the Chinese legend of a carp that, after successfully ascending the gorges of the Yellow River at Lung Men (Dragon Gate), will turn into a dragon The carp stone leads to another hypothetical attribution of the waterfall rock grouping to the Chinese Lanqi Daolong (Jpn. Rankei Doryu). This Zen priest came to Kyoto for three years to deal with questions on Zen matters at the court of ex-Emperor Go Saga, whose palace was located at the present site of the Tenryuji temple. Two other temples that Lanqi Daolong revived during short periods of residence have the same type of Dragon Gate waterfall.. Again, no documentary evidence exists that proves his engagement in constructing these Dragon Gate waterfalls" Lee

Personally, I think the bathroom is one place where it's OK to deviate from the rest of the house's style. As the daughter and sister of architects, I do get upset when people go against the style of their home (especially such a cool old home as yours!) by, say, putting a Tuscan-style kitchen in a humble New Englander or working-class Victorian, as happens around here. But I feel like bathrooms, especially master baths, are sort of private, separate reclusive spaces, and it's OK for that space to be it's own thing. Also, it IS possible to do a clean-lined, zen spa-like bath but also bring in a few touches of the rest of the house. In our house, the overall aesthetic is a sort of modern coastal cottage blend. The house has double-hung windows with divided panes above, for example. In our master bath reno, we used a very modern aesthetic, but we also brought in just a few touches of the rest of the house : we stuck with the same window style, we used fairly cottagey overhead light fixtures from REstoration Hardware (along with more modern sconces) and we re-used the old, vintage glass-paned exterior door of the house as the bathroom door. These elements soften the modern stuff and tie the bathroom to the rest of the house, even though the bath is definitely more modern and spare than everything else. Perhaps you can do something like that. Take a look at inspiration pics on Houzz.com and other sites... there are a lot of very beautiful, spare, modern spa baths that also bring in a little bit of rococco glam -in the form of a light fixture or elaborate mirror maybe- that might be just the thing to satisfy your needs. Our bathroom looks like this, below. In the second shot you can see one of the cottage-y ceiling lights, the very non-modern-looking window, and a bit of the old vintage glass door...