Should I fill pond with well water?
I have a rain runoff pond which is 60 years old and 3/4 acres and at full pool 7' deep. The previous owner side she never seen it dry up in 14 years so she thinks there might be a small spring? This winter it shrunk down to 1/8 acre and about 3' deep due to lack of rains. The pond is loaded with bream and I've started added koi fish (50 koi) and it also has some catfish, bass, turtles and loads of frogs. Over the month of last April it filled back up with the rains but now is dropping 5/8" per day or about 10,700 gallons. I thought about running my well pump on a timer for 30 minutes and then off for an hour to fill back about 5,500 gallons a day. This way it would help offset to maybe 3/8" drop per day until the rains come back.
The well is about 175'+/- deep and I see 1-1/4" pvc fittings. The pump is about 14 years old so I thought about going to a solar pump system but before I do I need to figure out if adding the well water is a good idea and the cost of running the power if I replace to the same system but maybe a larger tank.
Are these pumps made to run up to an hour consistently?
Will the well water hurt the plants and fish?
Is there a type lily pad I could add to reduce surface evaporation?
Comments (6)
catfishhoward
10 months agoRelated Discussions
Filled my pond with surface water, how can I filter and clean it
Comments (2)Your pond sounds about 1500-2000 gallons. One way to figure out true capacity is measure how long your tap+ hose takes to fill a 3 or 5 gallon bucket and then how long it takes to fill the pond. You should be able to do the math. Best thing to do is pump out this water, clean the remaining silt out, set up a submersible pump in a prefilter going to a skippy or other biofilter that feeds a waterfall. Refill, get filter going, buy some waterlilies and some other plants good for your climate, pot them and place into pond. After about a week, put in some cheap goldfish. If after a year, you have kept them alive and have discovered if local predators (birds, coons, ...) don't snack on them, you can go for more expensive goldfish. Your pond is too small for koi. You can get a submersible pump that also has a fountain attachment or a separate fountain pump. My pond (1500 gallons) is pretty low maintenance and is set up the way I describe above with goldfish and rosy reds, waterlilies, and several types of marginals + parrot's feather....See MorePond....making a well...sucking clean water??
Comments (2)I think the best thing you can do is contact a local well driller for advise. You might not get ground water at 20', the water table might be much deeper than that. And they could advise you about what kind of well screen you'd need to keep the pump flowing all of the time. You also need to come up with a way to protect children and animals from falling down into that 20' deep shaft....See MoreWindow well filling with water
Comments (8)+1 on Worthy's reply. You probably have/had clay drain tiles, and they are sure to be shot by now. And draining to daylight would be best if your property allows. Your well is not highh enough, and wood is not the best at keeping water at bay. If you cannot drain to daylight, I would do the following: Remove that wooden well, and dig the well out at least a couple feet below the bottom of the window. Pickup a deeper plastic or metal well at a box store, and install the new well so the lip is quite a bit higher than this one....high enough so you can bring in additional fill dirt, and get a decent pitch away from the house. Use fill dirt, ideally with some clay in it, not topsoil. the idea is you want the water to run away from your foundation, not soak in. At least get a good pitch for several feet away from the foundation. Then fill the deeper well you dug with small size drainage stone or pea gravel, and put a lid on it for good measure 9premade, or cut from plexiglass or lexan. Water shouldn't get into the well with the lid, and when it runs off, your new positive grading should divert it away from the foundation. If water does happen to get into the well, it will drain into the gravel so that unless you get some kind of record rainfall, it won't pool up deep enough to get up to the bottom of the window. Try to make sure the grading around your entire foundation has a positive pitch away from the house...at least as much as you can. Run drainage pipe to get the gutter water away from the house as well. By the way, what piping does the cleanout in the picture go to?...See MoreFill with well water?
Comments (5)That water needs to run through the water softener/filters but that is going to be a problem since back washes take time and a fill MUST be continuous. The only other proper solution is to truck water in from somewhere that doesn't have the pH and iron issues. With iron in the water, a sequestering agent is needed. I would also add CuLater pouches to the skimmer to remove the metal. The sequesterant will only keep the irom from causing stains but will break down and more needed to be added. AFAIK, CuLater pouches in the skimmer are the only product that will actually remove the iron. The result will be less sequesterant will be needed as your make up water will reintroduce iron. Scott...See Morecatfishhoward
10 months agoHere's a picture from this winter when the water got low. At this point it only had 2 koi about 24" each. All the fish did good. I did just add a diy 9000 gallon fountain to help add oxygen when the level gets low again but not sure I really need it as long as there not gulping air? Don't think running the fountain really increased the evaporation much.
I have about 50 koi 5"-12" in these cages growing up until they reach 14" so they don't get eaten as easily from the large catfish and bird predators. This time next year I'll probably release them but if the water drops that low again it will be hard to push the cage in deeper water.
catfishhoward
10 months agocatfishhoward
10 months ago
jrb451