On Wednesday a couple of weeks ago, when David went out to make a cup of tea at about 8am, he saw that Kevin was already starting work, getting set up for the big pond clearing that he and Josh had as their task for the day.
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And the big pumpout begins - the algae and sludge were so thick that the filter on the end of the hose got inextricably clogged and Josh had to cit it off. Later I used my weeding hook to clear it out - took ages!
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There is more water in that pond that we expected. Josh had the hose out
across the lawn between our place and Susan's. What a weedy mess that
left! Then he moved the hose to the gutter and it half flooded the road!
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Kevin doing a brush down of the pond bottom while the remainder of the water was pumped out.
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In that sludge you can see the larger of our two frogs.
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Ready and waiting to go back in the pond...
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And back he goes.
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The bottom is clear and clean, and now it is being refilled. It took over two hours with the hose running constantly.
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Now they have started on cleaning Janet's pond. She calls hers Lake Superior because it's larger than ours. We call ours Top Lake because it's higher...
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Lake Superior has the pump in it which needed to be relocated to down in the sump so it was clearing more gunk each time it was on.
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For some reason, the gardening shed doesn't have a supply of butterfly/fish nets - who'd have thought? So I headed up to a local shop that sells all sorts of cheap and random items at really reasonable prices. I bought 3 nets. I didn't need one because I was official photographer. Janet joined Kevin and Josh in capturing fish before they got sucked up into the pump - would have been messy! Janet and I have kept one net and donated the others to the gardeners.
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The frog is happy again. Isn't he a beaut?
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Kevin digging out the water-lilies in Lake Superior's sump. Heaps of grunge in the bottom of that!
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While the clean up took the whole day, there were still tasks to complete:
- tidying up the pump and pipe work - done
- installing the fountain - done
- completing the wiring - done
- trimming rocks between the ponds to ensure there was not too much water in one pond and not enough in the other - done
- PROJECT COMPLETE - apart from Kevin bringing some white water lilies from other ponds around Parkwood for both of our ponds...
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| Originally the plan was to use that green ceramic globe behind Kevin as part of the fountain. However, the diameter of the hole through it and its base was too narrow for the hose. Kevin fashioned a limiter (or whatever it's called in plumbing terms) to make the hose thinner, however the pressure with a narrower hose was too strong and the water spouted up about a metre. Not what we or he wanted. So instead, he found some large and small rocks and fed the pipe up through them. We love it! |
Janet donated us some fish from her copious supply, and we are going to buy more for our Top Lake. And we are going to buy a pool vacuum head and hose as well as a hand pump to start and maintain the siphon - so we can keep the bottom of the ponds clean without having to ask Kevin to clear the filter every week or so.
