Diverting rainwater into pond

[Huge]

I have a large (for a domestic garden - although we call it the small pond, since I have a large pond, too. Whatever. It's probably about 30 feet across and 6 feet deep) pond about 50 feet from the house. It dried up last summer, and looks like it may do the same this year. It's fed by (very old, clay, probably clogged) land drains from the rest of the garden, and has an overflow into the ditch in an adjacent field.

Is there any good reason why I shouldn't divert the rain water drains into the pond to stop it drying up? (This question prompted by the torrential downpour we've just had!) They presently go into the aforementioned ditch.

And if I do, what kind of pipe shall I lay from the house to the pond;

- 4" mains? Needs a lot of digging.

- Rainwater downpipe? Less digging, but this isn't what it's intended for.

- Some hosepipe pushed into a cut in the lawn, with a water butt at the house end to provide some buffer? I'm inclined to this, since it's the least work...

[Muddymike]

An uncle of mine had a similar issue. He used a couple of water butts linked by plastic water supply pipe which then led on to the pond and it worked quite well. In real downpours the butts overflowed as the pipe couldn't handle the volume of water. I would think normal hose pipe would flatten after being underground for a while and of course is normally only 12mm. Something like 22mm mains water pipe would be better.

Mike

[Martin Brown]

Ours was done by altering the path of a downpipe and a minor bodge. A rainbutt to act as a buffer and a filter on the ingress side to stop things going down the plug hole and jamming it is a good idea.

Make sure you are not expecting water to run uphill (or if you are design it with an immersible pump) another reason for a sump.

38mm ribbed flexible pipe in a single length. Compromise between throughput and trench size.

You can get stuff intended for this sort of duty with corrugations.

[Huge]

Great, thanks!

[Huge]

Another good idea, thanks!

Hmmm. Thanks for reminding me I have a spare submersible pump. Somewhere. Then I don't need to worry about running water uphill.

Great, thanks.

[damduck-egg]

Ours which runs from the linked water butts uses the ribbed wire reinforced plastic pipe available from numerous places that lean to providing pipe for water gardens and fish ponds. available in various diameters fro 12mm up 50mm, This link example only, I bought locally.

Also loads on ebay but who knows how thin the plastic is.

You can get larger diameters but then step into more industrial or agricultural suppliers . a version is sold as perforated for land drainage so it is fairly robust for burial, Don't get the wrong kind.

Mole plough one in, probably overkill and machinery damage to lawn etc.

I used 32 mm diameter ribbed laid way for a run of about forty feet. from linked water butts fed from house gutters. ,They overflow through it when full but I have also arranged a connection at the tap level so I can drain water from the butts as on the way to the pond I have branch leading to a soaker feeding some blueberry bushes which do not like mains water . Also two sheds and a green house are connected as it passes so the pond gets topped up well from any rain , if it overflows then it does so via a semi bog garden and then onto the vegetable patch.

Only thing to watch out for with using butts is what might end up in them , I was happily rinsing a car by dipping the bucket straight into the Butt when I realised that the remnants of detergent in the bucket had got into the Butt and would make it way into the pond, It wasn't much and I got away with it but it may depend if the pond just has wild things or exotic sensitive fish.

G.Harman

[Jethro_uk]

What are the local water authority regs ?

ISTR there is a presumption that rain water belongs to them (wherever it falls) and to abstract it needs permission ?

More a legal than practical issue, I admit ;)

[damduck-egg]

Never heard of that, I thought it may have been mentioned when we obtained our first water butt or two at a discount from the local water supplier a few years back when they were encouraging take up of rainwater for gardens etc so they do not have too provide the equivalent purified to drinking standard only for it to be poured through some dung into the vegetable patch.

Once it is in the ground things get different but even then you need to get into the realms of 20 tonnes of water a day before the powers get really interest. No doubt there are exceptions inplaces.

G.Harman

[damduck-egg]

He may have a colony of drought resisting African Lungfish for all I know, that would be fairly exotic for East Anglia.

G.Harman

[Jethro_uk]

I think there's some "logic" ... a rainwater butt is simply replacing water that would have come from the tap, with rainwater.

[news]

In the old days a slight gap was left between the shoe and the top of the butt, the initial dusty rain off the roof dribbled down the gap and the later cleaner torrent poured across the gap into the butt.

Covering the butt with a cloth should also cut down mosquito larvae.

Of course they are not a problem if the butt drains into the pond over an hour or so and there is a suitable predator in the pond, gold fish will eat mosquito larvae.

With the 38mm pipe idea it's only necessary for the head of the pipe to be higher than the pond, so raising the butt or the 38mm take off in the butt will give sufficient fall without a pump.

AJH

[news]

Never heard of that but even so isn't there an exemption for up to

20M3/day abstraction from ground water?

AJH

[Huge]

If you abstract > 100 cu metre/day of surface water you need a licence, so I assume less than that is OK.

But ... I'm not abstracting anything, just redirecting it through the pond, which drains into the same ditch the rainwater drains presently do.

[newshound]

Basically +1, but you might want to consider the rigid pipe used by farmers, which (I think) starts at 25 mm. It can be black or blue, I have 100 metres of the black stuff which runs above ground from a spring to a stables. Shows no sign of degradation after 10 years. Nice robust plastic compression fittings are readily available.

[newshound]

Nice and flexible, might not cope with burial as well as rigid pipe. Readily available in various sizes from eBay or fishpond suppliers. I use this around my stables, it stands up to UV pretty well.

>

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes.

No. useless - cant take peak flows

[Brian Gaff]

I don't think so, but one has to be careful what you put on the land that drains as if its toxic it can poison the pond or make excessive algei grow. I'd also maybe filter the outflow for crud too. Certainly used to work around here for many years, but the pond here was filled in when I started to lose my sight. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

Yes also some hose pipe material cracks after a few years. The stuff that looks woven seems best but its not cheap, and its probably better to use proper larger bore pipes. I had problems with the join to the rainwater butt though. Nobody seemed to make a reliable way of connecting anything other than a hosepipe to them. In the end Eurothane Bond was the best as it remained a bit flexible. Brian

[Nightjar]

That, running across the surface, has done quite well for feeding rainwater from my large shed to the pond for several years now.

[Huge]

Sadly, it has to be buried, since it crosses a lawn.