Wednesday my 7500 GPH pump died. No fanfare or noise. It just quit. The motor wouldn't turn... probably a bearing froze up. In my mind I keep hearing "Bones" from Star Trek fame saying, "She's dead Jim... she's dead." OK, maybe your aren't a S.T. fan... how about this: Did you hear about the woman who backed into an airplane propeller? Disaster... Queue the drum roll. Moving right along... no more groaners.
This could have been a disaster but it turns out to be good news in more ways than one. The first good news is the pump is under warranty and will cost me nothing (they are expensive too) but time to replace. Since I have plenty of time I consider this good news. February 9, 2009 was the installation date. Can you believe it? That was only 4 months ago! The replacement pump has to ship from Denver so I won't have normal water flow until Friday.
In the meantime I'm using my 10,000 GPH pump that sits at the bottom of the skimmer pond to circulate water from the skimmer pond to the bridge pond. This is not ideal but a lot better than letting the pond water sit stagnant. The bio-falls and no-name pond have no circulation since they are above the bridge pond.
More good news. When the water suddenly quit flowing Wednesday afternoon I had to get into the strainer to remove the pump. After removing the strainer I discovered one of the male Woody's trapped. He was holding onto a PVC pipe and looked pretty spent. No telling how long he had been in there. I surmise he got trapped in the strainer and crawled up the side in a effort to get out. He then fell behind the strainer, winding up trapped with no chance of escape. If the pump had not died I probably would not have found him in time for him to recover from his entrapment. I guess the Toad Gods were look'n out for this guy.
I picked him up and placed him in the skimmer pond and proceeded to remove the pump from the bottom of the skimmer. After testing the pump and assuring myself there was nothing that I could do to save it I went to cleanup my mess at the strainer. That Woody was back in there again! Maybe it's the dark hole that attracts him... Anyway I removed him again and we kept an eye on him until it looked like he was going to crawl out of the pond. We left for the pond store to get the replacement pump ordered.
After returning from the pond store Ginger looked around for the Woody. She found him in the burrow as pictured in this post. Hopefully he will recover and move on to where the others have gone.
I'm a happy camper for saving the Woody from certain death. I'm happy I'll get a new pump at no charge. I'm also laughing about the lady who backed into an airplane propeller. I haven't thought about that story for many years. Humm, maybe I should share some of my "Little Johnny" jokes....
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