Have you ever pulled your wet end of the pump apart? It may be loaded
up with debri and other stuff. YOu would be surprised how algae and
other organisms can grow internally in the wet end of a pump. Its also
possible your impeller is worn. If its a major name brand pump odds
are you can replace the impeller and its not uncommon for them to
wear. All it takes is a little reduction on the outside diameter or
some scores from it picking up debri and efficeincy of the pump goes
down......You mentioned a PVC filter, well have you checked it........

Is there any way you can backflush your lines.........You may have
something in there restricting flow as well....and its also quite
common for pipes etc to get a growth of slime and such, which further
more restricts water flow and the pumps output.

From the discription of the pVC notch filter and screen door material
it is all together likely its full of junk......

Yet one more reason i like to dose my pond semi annually with PP and
allow it to clean the plumbing system out of the slime and growths.

I put my money on your PVC nbotch filter is restricted and possibly
algae and other junk possibly builtup in the wet end of the
pump........

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 13:36:46 -0700, "Darren"
wrote:

===My pond has been going just fine for a couple years now but lately, I have
===seen a decrease in water flow.
===
===When pumps fail, is it a "working" / "not working" scenario or is it a water
===flow just slowly starts going down? For some reason, I thought pumps kind
===of worked or they didn't. If they failed, they didn't work at all.
===
===Couple notes on the pond:
===* Whole thing is about 1000 gallons - 2 ponds - 1 small one flowing down two
===35' streams into a lower pond that is about 5' x 12' x 2'. Extenal pump
===(forgot name) that goes up 2" PVC - ~6' drop over the 35'.
===* the filter is a notched PVC piping system with screen door screen and a
===few inches of pebbles (Moorehaven folks in Seattle pointed me in that
===direction).
===* We have about 5 or 6 gold fish in there for the past year or so. The
===water has been very clear but the bottom of the pond has more "gunk" on it -
===my guess is due to the fish. Hopefully the extra floating plants and
===lillies and grasses I have in there will start cleaning up the stuff more.
===* I seem to have more string algae this year (probably fish again).
===Hopefully the barely bales will start getting that under control.
===
===Even when I clear off the bottom gunk (which doesn't take too long), the
===flow doesn't really increase. Could it be that the gunk has filtered down
===through the rocks \ screen and plugged the pvc filter?
===
===I don't want to replace the pump if that isn't the culprit. On the other
===hand, I don't want to drain the whole pond and replace all the rocks just to
===find out that it was the pump the whole time.
===
===Opinions \ advice is appreciated.
===
===Thanks
===Darren
===


==============================================
Put some color in your cheeks...garden naked!
"The original frugal ponder"
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