{"id":66,"date":"2010-12-20T15:30:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T15:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/?p=66"},"modified":"2012-01-30T13:04:07","modified_gmt":"2012-01-30T13:04:07","slug":"bottom-drain-decisions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/2010\/12\/bottom-drain-decisions\/","title":{"rendered":"Bottom Drain Decisions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tetra Retro fit Bottom Drain<\/p><\/div>\n

Since my pond was planned at 4 feet deep I knew I needed a bottom drain to suck out debris from the floor of the pond and to help maintain water quality. I had read about installing permanent drains with 4″ tubing and how to cement them in place and had overcome my fear about a bottom drain leak.<\/p>\n

However, after hitting solid rock and getting really tired of digging I decided to use a retro fit drain instead. This sits on the bottom and has a 2″ pipe which goes from the inside of your pond, over the edge, to the pump . Of course I made a couple of mistakes when installing.<\/p>\n

The directions said to fill the body of the drain with concrete to weight it down. I did not have concrete so I used sand. I then glued on the cap as instructed. It floated. There was more air than I thought even with the sand. So i drilled two small holes and added water until it wouldn’t hold any more. I then had to fill the holes and cover them so the water and sand would not leak out.<\/p>\n

The second mistake is assuming my walls were 90 degrees square to the bottom. More like 110 degrees so when I test fit my plumbing it stuck way out into the pond. I then decided this would not work and purchased a few feet of non-kink pipe so I could bend it where I wanted it. Now I have this ugly pipe coming over the side of the pond that I had not planned for.<\/p>\n

To fix the ugly pipe issue I purchased another bulkhead, barbed fitting and more PVC threaded parts and elbows. Installing a bulkhead near the skimmer after the lining has been burried and fit to the skimmer was a bit of a challenge.<\/p>\n

In the end it all worked out but you can see the piping leading to the drain. In time I am sure this will be covered with “pond patina” (aka Algae). I think I can also use the bulkhead with a pool vac once a year to do a thorough bottom cleaning.<\/p>\n

One other design flaw which I am not sure there is a way around yet. I ran my piping from the Skimmer and bottom drain through valves into a wye which then feeds the pump. If my water level drops below the skimmer I lose syphon. I can close the skimmer and keep it going but I think I may need to add a backflow\/check valve or a shut off device on the skimmer in case of sudden water loss.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: I later changed the plumbing from skimmer and Bottom drain to a simple 3 way valve near the skimmer. I do plan to add a pump to the skimmer
\nat some point. My next pond will have a proper 4″ bottom drain going to an external settlement chamber\/filter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since my pond was planned at 4 feet deep I knew I needed a bottom drain to suck out debris from the floor of the pond and to help maintain water quality. I had read about installing permanent drains with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pond-2010","category-pond-building"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":984,"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esearing.com\/pond\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}