Save on pond pumps, filters, waterfalls, koi food and How to achieve crystal clear garden pond water too.

This is a 250 word (approx) summary of a chapter from my book. Each chapter or main topic has been summarised in this way. For a complete list of summaries see the right hand column

Concepts:

pipe, pump, losses, friction, loss, diameter, waterfall, spreadsheet, water, computer program, calculation, bigger, pond, specifying, clean plastic pipes.

Summary:

- When water is pumped through a pipe some of its energy is lost because the water slides along the walls of the pipe creating friction losses.

- As you can imagine these losses increase with the rate of flow (velocity) of the water.

- The practical implication of this when specifiying a pump for your pond is that you must estimate how much friction losses are taking place.

- This amount of loss which can also be described as "head loss" must be added to the height the pump is required to pump to.

- Note that this loss can be very significant in long pipes and narrow diameter pipes.

- If you use more than 3 metres of pipe length, pump more than 2,000 litres per hour and especially if you use narrow tubing you MUST calculate the friction losses or decide to opt for at least 1 size bigger and maybe 2 sizes bigger pump and/or a wider/shorter pipe.

- In addition to the pipe friction loss, losses also occur when valves are used in a system.

- Losses also occur in restricted pipes, bends and so on.

- These tend to be about 20% of the pipe friction loss.

- While they can be calculated it is unnecessary for garden ponds (I build in an allowance in my computer program anyway).

- The calculation is extremely complex and this is why you can get my free computer program available in an Excel spreadsheet format.

- All you have to do is click on this e mail link and it will come to you.

- If you do not have a waterfall you type in the volume you want to pump per hour instead.

- The program will then calculate the exact pump specifications you need and upon which you can then rely.

- If you try different situations you will see what I mean when I talk about the fact that small diameter and/or long pipes are bad news.

- The program will work for all clean plastic pipes including large diameter pipes and very long ones.

- The first site has a great deal of information on converting units from one type to another as well as tables showing pressure losses due to friction.