I agree with Gale, a drill, though a stock tank heater element will melt
thru the ice in no time. ~ jan


On 9 Feb 2004 14:24:59 GMT, "BTC/TAK on ACK" wrote:

When a bike-path was put in along my property line a couple of years ago
there were a lot of electric service lines cut or "nicked". It appears
nicked can be worse because it can take a few years before the line
deteriorates. All of a sudden mid-day early in the week my power just went
out! I was "lucky" that I got "temporary" power by the weekend... it will be
weeks [or more] until another permanent line can be trenched in because of
deep frost. We had succeeded in keeping our pond partially open all winter,
but it froze over during the time we had no power... pretty thickly in fact.
In a way that might have been a good thing because since then we had a few
heavy "freezing rains" that flooded much of our yard. We chose the spot for
our pond to avoid any flooding problem. It looks like it's in the lowest
part of our property, so it appears to be a natural occurrence. But actually
there's a large hidden area which is quite a bit lower. Flooding has never
gone beyond that area until this weekend, when it was almost a foot over the
pond, and the top of that even froze over until late yesterday. I was afraid
the pond itself wasn't frozen quite enough to keep some "adventurous" fish
from escaping into the flood water before the flooding subsided...
especially since the ground is frozen so deeply that it's hardly absorbing
any water. It's apparently absorbing more than we had any reason to expect,
though, because the water over the pond area is gone [and no dead fish left
behind, thank God]. The pond itself is still frozen over though. I'm afraid
to "mechanically" break through the ice in the pond, with an axe for
example, having heard that is dangerous for the fish. On the other hand I'm
afraid to leave it frozen over much longer because of gaseous build-up under
the ice. I had effectively been keeping it clear with air bubbles, and
circulating water until last week, but that's not an option now. Any
suggestions?