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09-08-2020, 12:44 PM #1
Early morning dip in the Koi Pond
Late yesterday I noticed the bottom drain dome was floating on the surface last time this detached was about 10 -12 years ago, and I remember clearly how difficult it was to refit on the bottom drain and the length of time I spent during the night refilling the pond, as I have to drain it down to waist deep to have any chance of refitting the dome.
So this time after watching a youtube video drilling a 8mm hole in the dead centre of the dome and another 8mm hole about 100mm from the centre, this idea simply allows any trapped air and water to escape when pushing the dome back onto the spigot of the bottom drain.
So at 6:30am this morning I started draining down the pond to approx waist deep as I'm over 6ft 3"tall, the water is still fairly deep and I have steep sloping sides around the bottom drain, which makes this operation still very difficult to get down to the drain, luckily the water temperature was a balmy 20C at around 8:15am this morning I had enough water drained out to attempt to refit the dome, so with just socks on hopefully to avoid slipping on the slimy liner and just boxers shorts on, I gingerly got into the pond after a few minutes to acclimatize to the water after two or three attempts with my head underwater, I managed to locate the spigot on the dome and pushed it on, I then gently applied pressure to the centre of the dome with my foot, the another ducking just to feel around the dome lip was equal distance all round the drain.
From what I learnt today that tip on drilling those holes in the dome certainly made life easier this time refitting the dome, with no air or water trying to push the dome back off, I wonder why I did not think of this idea before being so simple and having a koi pond for coming up fifty years, just goes to show you can still learn in advancing years.
Still a long way to go refilling the pond at 13:00 just over 450 gallons have gone back in, trouble is with every one water their gardens water pressure is low at least it should be done in daylight hours this time.
Last edited by Dave26; 09-08-2020 at 01:04 PM.
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09-08-2020, 01:26 PM #2
my pond is also a bottom drain, once cleared of all rubbish for a new underlay and liner there was no bottom drain dome to be found anywhere, no idea what the previous owner done, i'm guessing like you said it must have come loose and frisbeed away to another garden, not to have the same problem of draining, waders on and diving i snapped off the 3 spigots of the dome and drilled 3 holes where they were, got some SS screws and screwed onto the flange, i doubt it will come off now.
Human life is truly a short affair. It is better to live doing the things that you like Inazo Nitobe
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09-08-2020, 01:34 PM #3
It looks like this now.
Human life is truly a short affair. It is better to live doing the things that you like Inazo Nitobe
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09-08-2020, 01:41 PM #4Human life is truly a short affair. It is better to live doing the things that you like Inazo Nitobe
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freddyboy Thanked / Liked this Post
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13-08-2020, 11:02 AM #5
Had to drill a couple of holes in mine also for the exact same reason.
You'd have thought bottom drains would be threaded rather than push on.
Put a smear of sealant round mine before refitting it - hopefully I put just enough to hold it in place but not too much that I have to cut if off if removing it in the future!
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13-08-2020, 01:07 PM #6
@ RS2000 That's the trouble you can't fix it permanently to the bottom drain, you never know if you need to remove it if ever you had a bad problem with blanket weed, I suspect my dome was dislodged when I had a blanket weed problem early in the year, and I used the long aluminium pole from my koi net to slightly poke around the edge of the dome to clear the blanket weed, to get the water circulating properly, before I applied some Blanket Answer I was really surprised the treatment worked as it was still below the recommended water temperature, so lucky for me the dome did not come right off then that would have been icy cold to have a dip with the koi.
Regarding drilling two holes in the dome I was amazed how much easy this made refitting the dome, also the bio filter did not come to any harm because of the large cold water change, I think because of the high temperatures we have all been having draining off 1000 gallons, to enable refitting the dome easier I measured the water temperature before draining it was 22c, and after refilling was still 22c probably because it took all day refilling and the first stainless tank which has the Answer installed was empty of water and was so hot in the sunlight it would have burnt your hand touching it, so when I finally opened the bottom drain slide valve to let the water through it instantly heated the water, plus I left the slide valve closed to the bio chamber until the pond water was up to running level which as said took all day.
So I was very lucky it did not set back the bio filter with such a large cold water change knowing how fickle the bio system can be.
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13-08-2020, 02:55 PM #7
I used some ptfe tape to make it a tight fit
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freddyboy Thanked / Liked this Post
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13-08-2020, 09:35 PM #8
I used a little smear of CT1 and found it easy to twist it off gradually and its a air bottom drain.
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freddyboy Thanked / Liked this Post
The Daily pond temp thread
Still at around 17C, know what you mean about getting the covers off though :D it will be really...