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Beautiful pictures !! We're to have temps around 60 Monday and Tuesday 
Pumping under the ice
- Thread starter DeepWater
- Start date
DeepWater
The Great Abyss
[I posted some of this on another person's winter woes thread, but will re-post here with pictures to keep up the documenting of Pumping Under the Ice]
Late December and early January wehad such a spell of cold with no snow cover, that the ice became thick enough that one of the two wye connected pump inputs 18" down starter sucking in air, in a short cycle style. The reduced water flow down the waterfall seemed to let the shell get more narrow on the inside. A 2nd fault was that for several days the daytime sun on the southern exposure above the falls caused the black-liner-touching-ice to melt and open a hole, and the oscillating pumped water pressure would surge through that hole up/down/up down and the water flowed over the top of the falls, freezing larger and thicker, and lowering the pond water level even more. This pic shows the growing ice shell over the falls.
I drilled a hole in the pond, the ice was indeed 18" thick! I could hear the pump gasping through that hole.
Then I carried 5 gallon pails of water to dump down the hole. This increased the geyser problem above the waterfall as the full GPH flow was still too much to fit under the ice shell. I piled snow and ice shards around the geyser to raise the spillover height and contain it, and continued to slowly add more buckets of water. After a few hours the geyser froze over and I could hear all water flowing under the shell again... No more air induced short cycling either. I quit there, and a few days later it got to 38 and rained an inch, which refilled the pond and added another inch of water on top of the ice. It's all frozen solid now and happily pumping under the ice again.
I probably added about 150 gallons of water. Oddly, the water level in my drilled hole never rose up more than about 2" from the bottom of the ice. I thought it would suddenly take one last bucket and rise to the top. The hole started 1" wide, and as I dumped in warmer water, got wider and wider.
Late December and early January wehad such a spell of cold with no snow cover, that the ice became thick enough that one of the two wye connected pump inputs 18" down starter sucking in air, in a short cycle style. The reduced water flow down the waterfall seemed to let the shell get more narrow on the inside. A 2nd fault was that for several days the daytime sun on the southern exposure above the falls caused the black-liner-touching-ice to melt and open a hole, and the oscillating pumped water pressure would surge through that hole up/down/up down and the water flowed over the top of the falls, freezing larger and thicker, and lowering the pond water level even more. This pic shows the growing ice shell over the falls.
I drilled a hole in the pond, the ice was indeed 18" thick! I could hear the pump gasping through that hole.
Then I carried 5 gallon pails of water to dump down the hole. This increased the geyser problem above the waterfall as the full GPH flow was still too much to fit under the ice shell. I piled snow and ice shards around the geyser to raise the spillover height and contain it, and continued to slowly add more buckets of water. After a few hours the geyser froze over and I could hear all water flowing under the shell again... No more air induced short cycling either. I quit there, and a few days later it got to 38 and rained an inch, which refilled the pond and added another inch of water on top of the ice. It's all frozen solid now and happily pumping under the ice again.
I probably added about 150 gallons of water. Oddly, the water level in my drilled hole never rose up more than about 2" from the bottom of the ice. I thought it would suddenly take one last bucket and rise to the top. The hole started 1" wide, and as I dumped in warmer water, got wider and wider.
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Wow, that's a lot of ice !
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It looks like there's some water being diverted out of the pond from the frozen stream.
I wondered, too, if that was pond water to the right in the first photo.
DeepWater
The Great Abyss
In the first photo, that is the pond to the right of the stream, it's what I'm standing on in the drilling pics. The right side of the stream is lower than the left side. While ice did build up on the left too, it didn't make it beyond the edge. It's one piece of liner covering the entirety of pond, stream, waterfall, and bog.
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So is the stream ice buildup about 1 foot thick?
I can see why your pump is cavitating then - all that water locked up in ice form.
It does look like some water is leaving the stream towards the fence.
The fun of a running pond in the winter.
I can see why your pump is cavitating then - all that water locked up in ice form.
It does look like some water is leaving the stream towards the fence.
The fun of a running pond in the winter.
DeepWater
The Great Abyss
Yeah the waterfall-into-stream section turned into a triangle shape where the ice got at least 12" thick in the middle of the "hypotenuse" ( oh now there's a word I don't use every day).
I thought for sure that the rather large pond volume would have no trouble absorbing any stream ice build-up, but the ice got so thick this year that the under ice air layer happened to be at the pump intake. I think next November I'll shut off the valve to the 18" input and let the 5' deep input do it all.
The left side of the stream does have an icy appearance, but it's more from sun melting snow on the black liner. (Ran out of time to rockify the rest of the edging before winter hit)
I thought for sure that the rather large pond volume would have no trouble absorbing any stream ice build-up, but the ice got so thick this year that the under ice air layer happened to be at the pump intake. I think next November I'll shut off the valve to the 18" input and let the 5' deep input do it all.
The left side of the stream does have an icy appearance, but it's more from sun melting snow on the black liner. (Ran out of time to rockify the rest of the edging before winter hit)
Rockify... the word we've never heard but we all know exactly what it means!
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I have one, well need to fix the power supply, the lens gets coated with algae muck, and it is under ice so can't clean. When you can see the fish they just float in place, occasionally swim and snack on algae.
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oh no ,so u cant see if they r ok?
DeepWater
The Great Abyss
Pumping Under the Ice... has worked out quite well this winter. Here's a series of pictures that show how winter came and went from Jan 9 to March 10.
There are some hidden gems in some of these pictures, see if you can find any. (and I'm trying to post this carousel style, so can right arrow/swipe through them to see in timeline order)
There are some hidden gems in some of these pictures, see if you can find any. (and I'm trying to post this carousel style, so can right arrow/swipe through them to see in timeline order)
