Day Two of Filter replacement - filter house pipework begins and electric / water trench dug

After a good and positive first day I was hopeful the momentum would keep going into day two.

At present the filter house daisy chains it's power from the growing on house which is a big problem. Currently if the power trips in either it's takes out both. There have been two occasions where this has caused the power to be off for a few hours and then koi in the growing on tank have had ammonia poisoning. Thankfully I have always made it to them in time and done 60-80% water changes and after 6ish hours the koi right themselves. I don't want the risk of this happening again.

So Craig arrived at 6:30am and started to dig the trenches for the new water and the new electric feeds by 6:45am. The water feeds will be used for the growing on tank, the filter house and a new garden tap. The electric feeds will be used for a new dedicated electric feed for the filter house and also a new one for garden lighting. This digging was much tougher than the trench for the return pipes because this soil hadn't been touched last year during the pond build and also being 45m long didn't help.

 

We will be putting all the electric cabling within conduit pipework and we have access hatches (man hole covers) at either end so we can easily add more cables at a later date. By mid afternoon the 100m of 3" conduit pipe and 100m of 25mm water pipework arrived.

 

Within the filter house the layout has now been agreed. The support frames for the bakki showers and header tank were moved into place and the drum was raised up to the correct height.

Simon and Neil moved the bottom trays of the two bakki showers into place onto the frames and attached 4" swept bends to the bottom 4" spigot.

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The holes in the filter house wall for the 4" returns to the pond were cut out with a heafty drill and then the 4"return pipes pushed through.

 

We have included a header tank in our plans to prevent bubbles returning back to the pond within the return pipes. Once the 4" pond return pipes were placed through the filter house wall Simon and Neil were able to attach this to the bottom of the header tank via tank connectors and a lot of neat pipework! The 4" swept bends at the bottom of the bakki showers had 4" pipes attached so they now return feed into the top of the header tank. We expect some splashing from these bakki shower return pipes so we will add some further swept bends to the end of the pipes so the water feeds straight down. As you will see the returns to pond are at the bottom of the header tank again to reduce the chance of bubbles returning down the pipes.

 

Another good day of progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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