It has been a week with no sighting of Joe. I don't know if it has been cool enough to cause her to prepare for winter or if the changing environment in the pond arena has caused her to seek better digs. In any case Ms. Joe has not blessed us with her smile and I have to assume she is gone until next year. At least I hope she returns next year... this is like a cliff hanger at the end of a TV series regular season. So turn on, tune in and watch for teasers.
I am also sorry to report that there is a major malfunction in the pond. I guess in the grand scheme of things the term "major malfunction" may be a bit of an overstatement. Call it a "minor malfunction" or "major malfunction" or just a regular everyday FUBAR or if you prefer SNAFU. Are you curious yet about what could possibly be wrong with the pond?
It leaks!
Not being able to just leave it at that, I have to tell you the story and what I'm going to do about it.... or what I think I'm going to do about it.
This past Monday morning I finished filling the pond and powered up the pump. It was beautiful. I was pleased and took pictures and posted them to this blog. I have to say I was feeling proud of myself for building the waterfall and seeing how it worked out. I sat next to the pond for about an hour and listened to the water and just rested... my bones were tired.
Later that day I noticed the water level was low. I rationalized that I must not have filled it completely in the morning so I filled it again making sure it was full to the waterline. Monday evening the water was low again. I realized I must have a leak somewhere. Of course the question is where.
I shut down the pump and let all the ponds settle. Before going to bed Monday night I marked the waterline in each pond. On Tuesday I expected to find one of the ponds low and that would point me to the faulty pond. The pond Gods were not being kind. On Tuesday morning all the ponds were pretty much where they were on Monday evening. How can that be?
I waited until Tuesday evening and none of the ponds indicated a leak. This was very scary because I realized I was going to have to THINK! So I got out my THINK notebook, placed it on my head, put on my hat so the notebook wouldn't fall off and started thinking about my pond. About water. About ice cream. About the pond. About candy. About sex but quickly back to ice cream.
Eureka, I THINK I've got it. The pond must be leaking at the waterfall. Maybe I tore the liner when laying the stones. Quite possible as some stones have very sharp edges. Maybe the padding I put on the cinder blocks slipped and a corner poked through the liner. In either case it explained why I was losing water when the pump was running and not losing water when I shut it all down. I wonder if I'm thinking correctly...
I wanted to know how much water was leaking. I fingered out approximately how many cubic inches there were in the top 1 inch of the last or bottom pond (20 ft X 5 ft X 1 inch = 14400 CI). Then I opened my handy dandy convert program and under the volume tab I converted the cubic inches to gallons of water. Knowing I was losing about 2 inches of water every 3 hours or so I calculated that I was losing about 40 gallons of water per hour. Wow, quite a bit. If this is a single hole in the liner I shouldn't have any problem seeing it. Who knows if it's a single hole or not....
So my plan is: Call my pond guru and run my logic past him. Getting another opinion on my insanity me thinks. If my logic stands I'll be tearing down my just put up, no name, waterfall in search of a hole. I hate to do it but I will also have to dump a bit over 1000 gallons of water.
I'll post an update right in this blog when I have something to say. Will probably be in a couple of days.
Lastly, I realize this is a FROG Blog and I'm kinda turning it into a POND Blog. I just want to say that Joe wouldn't have stopped by without there being a pond and in a way a frog environment is about the frog... kinda... a little?
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