Rich,

What a bad day, just thank God that you were there to catch it each time.
If it had been me, it would have been the day that I was gone for 14 hours.
I tried using just the friction fitting technique and really hate having to
buy new fittings all the time and to recut or buy new pipe, but I learned my
lesson early and have glued every time since.

Tom L.L.
---------------------------------
"RichToyBox" wrote in message
news:fp3ma.434160$L1.124342@sccrnsc02...
On April 10th, we had a severe thunderstorm about 9:00 PM. It apparently
tripped the GFCI. 8:00 AM April 11, I go outside and notice steam coming
from the skimmer box, where my heater is mounted. That was rather
unusual,
so I went to check it out. What I found was that the pumps were not
running. So I go and reset the GFCI, and go in for breakfast. The cable
is
out. My SIL comes by to drop the Granddaughters off, and on his way out
of
the neighborhood, sees the cable man, and calls for me to go see him. Off
down the next street to see if what he is doing will bring back the cable.

As I returned to the house, DW is out front waving frantically. Water is
running down the back yard from the smaller pond. I go out and find that
one of the friction fit pipes has come loose and is dumping the pond. I
have been using the friction fit for about 5 years to make it easy to
remove
the pumps with no problems but apparently the heat caused the pipe to come
loose. I put the pipe back, start the pump again, and go up to the door
in
the cover, open it to start filling the pond, and find that I have 6 dead
fish, and a couple of others that are near death. Of the dead were 2 very
large koi, one yellow butterfly, the other an ochiba. The other four were
one year olds, with two of them being favorites. I start exercising the
doitsu showa back and forth to try to revive him while the pond is
filling.
He starts to come around some, but wants to lay on the bottom on its side
and only move when disturbed. The platinum butterfly is at the top
gasping.
I go in and get 3 pints of hydrogen peroxide and put it in the water while
the water continues to fill. The water had been pumped down about 25%.
The
fish revive and all are swimming normally.

About 3:30 PM, we look out and water is running down the yard again. I
run
out and find that the pumps have pumped out almost 75% of the water. D***
friction fitting came loose again. Got the glue and fixed that problem.
Filled the pond back up.

About 7:00 PM looked out and water was running down the yard again. Went
out and the other friction fitting had come loose. Got a plumbing union
and
glued all the joints. This time it had only started to lose water, maybe
5%.

Well I guess that counts as my spring water change.