Hi,
would it be possible to connect the bottom drain pipework to the soakaway which runs from the house,the soakaway is only a couple feet away from were the pond will be,the soakaway is only used to drain water from the house roof it then runs underground in to my dads garden,will this soakaway cope with the waste matter from the pond when i flush the pond and filter system out,or is there risk of it blocking,also how often does the pond and filter need to be flushed or cleaned.many thanks nye
All depends on your pond Nye. How big is it and how many fish are going to cxxp in it. I personaly would not flush a filter to a soakaway, I would flush it to a holding tank and then pump from the holding tank into the drain system via a sludge pump.
Filters could be dumped every day during summer when you are feeding and the heat is up. This would soon clog up any soakaway and I'm sure if I was your dad I wouln't be happy if it ran towards my house.
got to agree with Did I Do That you are better with a sump.As for flushing filters not sure about the every day bit though but it will at least be weakly during the summer
What sort of pump are you using? I want to discharge water from my filters in the shed to a piece of woodland 10-15 metres away (2" diam. waste pipe). There is some gravity action because the waste pipe is 2ft lower than the filters but I would be happier using a pump.
Thanks guys,the pond size is as follows,length 12ft but 4x5 foot will be used to house the filters in so actual length will be 8ft,width 5ft,depth 5ft,what if i were to put a fine mesh on the end of the pipe to catch most of the c..p,would that work,with less chance of my dads soakway blocking?
Hi Steve
Thanks for the info - think I'll have to buy one!
Nye
For the dimensions you give the pond will hold about 1250 gallons. Many people work on a water change of about 10% per week so your looking at getting rid of 125 gallons per week discharge. Having said that, with a smaller pond volume and depending on your stocking level I would be inclined to replace about somewhere between 20-30% (250-375 gals).
With regards to a soakaway, even if you have a "strainer" on the end of the pipe, all of the fine detritus will still end up in the soakaway (mainly fish poo, but depending on the environment lots of other stuff as well). I don't have mains drainage where I live and rely on a septic tank which has an enormous soakaway. The soakway doesn't get clogged with crap because the septic tank acts as an enormous settlement chamber so that only water runs off. Also because I live in Wales where it seems to rain continually the house is surrounded by French drains. Even though the area around them is concrete with very little loose material apparently around, these clog with very fine sediment on a regular basis, so I imagine your soakway would suffer the same fate fairly quickly. In addition because of the nature of the waste coming from your filters, it will probably develop a "pen & ink" once a reasonable amount of poo has been discharged. I wuold either try and tap into the drainage system as described by Steve or create a soakaway as far from civilisation as possible. I'm doing exactly that same myself at the moment - I'm going to run a waste pipe about 15 metres into some woodland behind my shed and use the discharge to create the environment for a bog garden.
I run a system like Dave’s my 300 easy dumps into a 20 gallon bin and I bought a sludge pump from Liddle for £25 which is 1200wt but it clears the water down a 50mm pipe quicker than it dumps from the filter.
I have outlets all over the garden and it’s great in summer for my plants and grass, but be careful because fish poo in large volumes can burn your grass but it obviously is sky high in nitrate for good growth. Fix the outlets with slide valves and you can choose where you want the water.
I dump my filter once every 3 days at the moment and my pond temp is 14c, when the temp rises to 20c next month I will be dumping once a day.
My water is heated by the way, just in case you thought it was lovely and sunny up here in Lancashire.
I used to have a sump / soakaway right next to my filter house, next to the pond. However flushing a Nexus during routine filter maintenance or water changes would fill this up quite easily in the summer, and the smell from the accumulating waste which didn't soak away was not very pleasant as the weeks went on (and this wasn't a very hot summer). I soon bought a much larger tank that is located quite a distance from the pond. I don’t have to pump the water as it is gravity fed since my garden is on a hill and terraced. In the Summer this will be used for the garden, which should cut down the water bill as we are on a meter. Hopefully it will make the plants thrive too.
I would not advise using the house soakaway, the roof will be transporting a lot of water there on its own and if you speak to your father, if it is anything like our roof soakaway, it is noticeably waterlogged in the winter. I think you would cause a problem also as you will be transporting sludge, and with the quantity of water you potentially will be discharging waterlogging the area will cause the smells to surface.
If you had a Nexus 200 on that size pond your father would be flushing the filter once a week (twice if heavily stocked or blanket weed problems).
but it will at least be weakly during the summer 
