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Going Green – Efficient, Sustainable Pond Techniques

By April 18, 2008May 5th, 2012General Tips

With all that is happening in the world today, the last thing you might think about while enjoying your pond is how efficient it might be.  There are statistics being thrown around today that talk about the ever looming global warming, greenhouse gasses, CO2 emissions and all sorts of stuff.

I bet you did not know, but even when it comes to your pond there are a few things you can do that will make it more efficient and thereby waste far fewer resources like energy and water.  Let me throw this little fact at you.  If your pond is 10 feet by 20 feet and leaks just one inch of water, you are loosing 119 gallons of water.

If that water is left to flow down any of the local sewer drains, it is not doing anyone any good.  Even if the waste water in your area goes through a treatment facility and is brought back to be used in some way or another, your leak is causing the treatment facility to waste energy on that water too.

Now of course you might be sitting there thinking I am some sort of conspiracy theory nut or something, but it’s not true.  I just think that if it is important to you to separate your recyclables from your trash each week, then you might find this information useful too.

By the way here is my shameless plug in this article.  Pond Shield epoxy is a water proofing coating that will seal up leaks in your pond.  Using it will help you not to contribute to a waste of water in the long run.

Ok going back to water issues.  How often do you back flush your filtration system?  Once per week?  Twice per month?  Ok, what do you do with it?  Let it go down a drain somewhere?  Bad pond owner!  Bad!  You should set up a way to irrigate existing plant life in your yard.  That would mean less watering with your normal irrigations system and then eventually, less waste.

What about the chemicals you use in your pond?  Are they eco friendly chemicals?  If not, they all have to be processed out of the water eventually you know.  Again, that means more energy exerted in the actual processing.

When you purchased your electric motor for your pump, did you make sure you bought one that would do the job efficiently?  You know over working or under working the electric motor will waste electricity too.  These resources come from somewhere and at the source if it means the exertion to create the energy is more than being used efficiently, then that too is considered a waste.

I hear all of these commercials every day where they say is X number of people replaced their dish washer with a brand new energy efficient one, it would be like removing X amount of cars from the road.  Yeah that sounds weird, but if you always think about the source that produces the energy and how it has to work more in order to do a less efficient job, then you can see the waste.

Anyway, just a little food for thought.  If you were planning to replace something in your pond because it is worn out, now you can applied these concepts to that new purchase.