When High Winds are on the Way
What to do (pond wise).
Make sure things that could blow around are nowhere near the pond. Â
Make sure your skimmer lid is secure. You can put a nice rock on top of it (especially if the lid is a fake rock).
Consider the drops in the waterfalls. Â Even a 4 inch drop lends itself to water loss in severe wind. Â You can turn off your pond pump to avoid water loss from wind.Â
The fish will be fine even for a couple days. Â An aerator is a good idea and keeps the water oxygenated.
What about the wind with a pondless?
If your system is pondless you might want to consider  turning it off.  But before you do…
Do you know if your vault overflows when you turn off the pump?
When we build a pondless feature we make sure the vault holds all the water in motion when turned off so that during pump maintenance, cleaning or a power outage you don’t lose large amounts of water.  What’s worse is when the water overflows where you don’t want it to!Â
Turn off your pump and watch to see if the system overflows.  You can plug it right back in if it’s about to lose water.
Keeping it off during high winds can avoid water loss.
Water loss even without wind?
By this time in December, you’ve already had your sprinkler lines blown out.  If you have an autofill in your pond or pondless system, you may have noticed that the water is going down faster than you thought it would. Very small amounts of water loss can add up and go unnoticed when there is an autofill. But what is normal?Â
Topping off the pond with 2 inches of water per week is normal evaporation.  If you’re losing more than 3 inches a week, you could have a leak.
If you have ever spoken to us about water loss, you know we ask you to turn off the pump, measure the level of the water and leave the pump off for the night. When you re-measure the next day, the water should be at the same level, or not more than 1/4 of an inch lower than it was. (If the system lost 1/4″ every day, you would have lost about 2″ over the week.) Remember, a leak test isn’t going to help much during super high winds so you might want to wait until it dies down.
This is so beautiful with the tree! ( I bet keeping the leaves out is rough!)
Especially during high wind, it is difficult to tell whether the water loss or evaporation. Let’s rule out some basic things (before panicking that there is a leak in the pond) by reading this.Â
Do you think you need to do a leak test? We have more information on that.Â
* This blog was NOT written by AI. This was written by me. I am not a professional writer, I am a pond person. Therefore, if you see a typo, please forgive me!
*No koi were harmed in the making of this content.Â