Your best pond set up

[allinearth]

What has everyone found to be the best set up (pump, valves, heads, filter, etc) for irrigation systems using water from a pond or lake? I have used submersibles in the past. I have had trouble with dirty water in my own. I have to clean the filter every day. So just looking for some fresh ideas.

[Waterlogged]

Is your intake close to the bottom? You could set up your filter to flush automatic

[AI Inc]

yes , you want a weight and a float to keep it off the bottom and off the top.

[allinearth]

Of course my pump is off the bottom. I did rig a filter back flusher with a timer. It goes 2x per day for 1 min. It helps but doesn't get everything out. Would a disk filter be better that a screen filter. By the way I currently use a 2" t filter with 60 screen.

[regularguy]

Originally Posted by Earthworker

What has everyone found to be the best set up (pump, valves, heads, filter, etc) for irrigation systems using water from a pond or lake? I have used submersibles in the past. I have had trouble with dirty water in my own. I have to clean the filter every day. So just looking for some fresh ideas.

I use to water out of a dirty near by river that was always being stirred up by pleasure boaters, I know thats not a pond but it is still a very dirty water application. I used to use a algae queen filter http://www.algaequeen.com/ it worked okay and I only had to clean it once per year and I pumped a lot of water through it, I water two acres of turf grass a lot. My biggest problem with that filter was that it didn't get the little stuff, like small little seeds from weeds and trees, I added a V strainer but that thing plugged all of the time. I had my algae queen filter in a plastic barrel sitting on top of blocks, I drilled holes in the middle of the barrel so only the good water from the middle could get in, not the silty water at the bottom or the water with stuff floating.

As of last year I abandoned the concept of pumping directly from the river and set three sand point wells (driven wells) in the water bearing sand next to the river and that works much better, this is probably not an option that you have if your working with a pond.

Before I went the sand point route I thought about mounting a algae queen filter on the bottom of a float (think small swim platform) and a pump on the surface and then using a sand filter to clean the water the rest of the way, I believe that the sand filter would get the organic stuff out, but I was never sure how to correctly size a sand filter for that application, its easy to size one for a swimming pool, but this is different as the load would be much higher. There is tons of filters on the net for these types of applications but the are really expensive and I wonder how well they really work. If I was going to look at that again I think I would find a golf course that pumps from ponds and visit with them and see what they are doing.

[allinearth]

Thanks for the reply regularguy. I was actually considering building a sump area next to the pond. (I am building the pond now) The sump area could be filled with clean stone with a 4 or 6" pipe in the middle to put the pump or suction line.

[allinearth]

Wow, thought I would get more feedback. Has this subject already been beat to death?

[Dripit good]

I typically use a self-priming centrifugal pump (Berkley) with either a 40 gal or 80 gallon guzzler (whichever applies).

For very silty/muck bottom situations I put the guzzler inside a plastic garbage can. I typically use a pvc intake line and 45 at the end where the guzzler goes into the can. I rig the end so the guzzler stays put several inches off the bottom of the can.

It's actually pretty easy to float the intake line out to it's destination with this set up. Tip the intake line a little to introduce water into the can. It's not that hard to control the amount of water going into the can making it buoyant for you.

Once you've fed it out the entire length, tip the can a little more and the water will fill....it will sink and rest on the bottom right where you want it. The garbage can protects the filter from the bottom debris. It's a pretty simple, cheap and effective condom for your filter.

May sound hokey, but it's worked well for me.

[DanaMac]

Originally Posted by Earthworker

Wow, thought I would get more feedback. Has this subject already been beat to death?

No, most of us rarely use pond water. I would say the overwhelming number of us primarily have systems from city water, and then a decent number use a well. Not many pond, river, or stream systems. None here that I know of at all.

[eludemann]

If your'e still building the pond, you should try a wet-well. Depending on the amount of water needed, it is a pipe a few feet in from the shore straight down 6 to 8 feet with a smaller pipe into the water 90 degrees at least 4' down. The end needs mesh or something to keep the fish out. The intake hangs into the vertical pipe in cleaner water. We have used 16" to 48" for different size pumps. There is a formula if you google wet well.