Bog building, also called upflow filter, eco filter, wetland filter

[paintguru]

Thanks everyone. Yes I have a pressurized filter before it so I don't think much of anything will be getting into the pipe. I will just use a cap then and call it a day.

 

[sissy]

But CE never pulling your pump and cleaning the inside is not good also .I have mine hanging off a pipe 2 feet down and 2 feet off the bottom but i clean out my pumps and clean everything with a hose back flushing the whole pump .Grit can be the death of a pump

 

[addy1]

Thanks everyone. Yes I have a pressurized filter before it so I don't think much of anything will be getting into the pipe. I will just use a cap then and call it a day.

With a lot of filtration before the bog, your plants might not get a lot of nutrients. Bogs usually are piped before filtration, not after. Try and see how the plants do, they may be just fine. Mine get pure unfiltered pond water.

 

[Huckleberry12]

I appreciated the replies to Paintguru as they clarified some of the things I was unsure about too.

 

[paintguru]

With a lot of filtration before the bog, your plants might not get a lot of nutrients. Bogs usually are piped before filtration, not after. Try and see how the plants do, they may be just fine. Mine get pure unfiltered pond water.

Shoot, that is a good point. Hmmm....well I'll give it a go and if my plants aren't happy I'll add a second pump in the pond to just get it raw water.

 

[addy1]

Or just a T off the line going to your filter feeding some of the water into the bog

 

[Meyer Jordan]

With a lot of filtration before the bog, your plants might not get a lot of nutrients. Bogs usually are piped before filtration, not after. Try and see how the plants do, they may be just fine. Mine get pure unfiltered pond water.

Bogs can be plumbed either way. In actuality, it is probably better to plumb after bio-filtration for a couple of reasons. 1) There will very little in particulate matter that will reach the 'bog' making clean-outs seldom needed. 2) The water will be Nutrient rich (Nitrate) which is the form most convenient for plant assimilation.

 

[addy1]

^^ the pond boss speaks! Thanks for the info Meyer

 

[Tula]

As @addy1 knows, I just have a "pretend bog", that is a decorative resin barrel, filled with gravel, water and plants. Last year, I kept the water level just at, or below the top of the gravel, to keep mosquitoes from breeding. This year, I thought about having a higher water level and using a mosquitos dunk. I purchased three new plants, but pee uuuuu, my pretend bog stinks!! I've decided to just keep the water level at gravel level and hope for the best!

 

[Meyer Jordan]

As @addy1 knows, I just have a "pretend bog", that is a decorative resin barrel, filled with gravel, water and plants. Last year, I kept the water level just at, or below the top of the gravel, to keep mosquitoes from breeding. This year, I thought about having a higher water level and using a mosquitos dunk. I purchased three new plants, but pee uuuuu, my pretend bog stinks!! I've decided to just keep the water level at gravel level and hope for the best!

Sounds like it needs cleaning.

 

[addy1]

The only stinky things I have in my pond are my lily pots, that clay does have some odor after sitting around a season growing pretty lily's.

 

[Tula]

Indeed . It doesn't have plumbing, just gravel and water. I got a spade and dug through it, pulling out any old roots etc, then flushed it with the hose , letting it over flow. I planted the new plants and bailed out the water till the gravel showed. We will see, if this doesn't work out...then I'm done with it.

 

[CountryEscape]

Tula, if you only have water sitting in a pot, no movement in the gravel, it will eventually stink. Can't keep stuff from blowing in there and accumulating. I'm not sure, maybe you DO have water movement down in the gravel. If not, you might try pushing an air line down into the gravel, and get an air pump, that would provide some movement and help keep it fresh, I think.

 

[LoganinMD]

On both this one and the other smaller one I have the ability to back flush the bog, just by opening a port.

How exactly do you make this? I presume you need to be able to back flush due to silt etc accumulating.

 

[CountryEscape]

LoganinMD, since I designed my bog pretty much from how Addy did hers, and have my pics handy, here is what I did. First pic is how the water line was connected to the PVC pipes. I used septic flexible line.

This is what the pipes looked like laid out in the bottom of the bog. There are holes on the bottom edges of the pipes, so the water pushes down and them filters up through the gravel. The clean outs are the ends with caps on them. I don't have the caps glued on, and they have stayed intact except for once. That pipe now has a rock on top of the cap to hold it in place. I just unplug the pump, remove the cap, fit it with another pipe that I direct the water with, and turn the pump back on to flush the lines.

Fill in with the pea gravel ....

and then water ...

I did one huge mistake ... I didn't allow enough overlap on ALL the edges of the bog (same thing for a pond), and when everything settled, I have an area or two that I have to watch closely for water going over the top edge.