Snoozer wrote: ↑Wed May 25, 2022 12:57 am
Thanks for the reply and thanks also for your help last year when I had a huge fish die off. Happy to say that this spring I had no floaters!
Now, back to what i came her for. I will install 3 manifold and keep on digging. I am putting the bog where there is a loose river rock sitting area. Easy enough to move that 3 inches of rock but under that was the 2-6 inches, depending on where i dug, of recycled asphalt that my son brought in to give a base for the stones. Seemed like such a good idea 15 years ago when digging didn't seem that difficult. So that has been moved and now i get to dig through my favorite, clay! I am no spring chicken any more and digging isn't quite as easy as it was when i was in my 50's.
I am thinking that I will purchase a separate pump for the bog. Current pumps are in a skimmer, which I need to clean the maple tree seeds out of again, as usual. The pumps in the skimmer feed the 4 foot wide waterfall and the stream that starts with a 2 foot wide waterfall. I don't want to have to dig up those pipe and start cutting and splicing. My thought was to get a 2,500 gph pump for the bog, would that size work or should i get something a bit bigger?
Do i need to use different size stone or would just pea gravel work? i do have the pile of the river rock that is 1-1 1/2 inch that i could put over the manifold. Would that work? I guess that whatever i do will work but i don't want to mess up too much.
I am looking forward to the bog and additional plants that are hopefully a bit easier to yank out of pea gravel that from under the large rocks/boulders in the pond. Some plants are, lets call them more hardy than others since invasive is so negative, than others.
You're quite welcome; always happy to help if I can.
I hear you re age and digging; had my son help for MY expansion and was glad he did. Clay is what we had, too, so I understand totally. That asphalt base for sure would make ME grimace! Try to do any clay digging when it's a bit wet, not hard and dry; much much more conducive to being dug up! And if you can hire some entrepreneurial young people to help, I'd enlist their aid; the money would be worth it! Or maybe see about renting a small digger from the big box store? Heard they're fun to use and don't cost that much.
IF you can, I'd go with graduated round rock for this reason; The plants only need the 12" of pea gravel and using larger stone below will lessen chances of clogging as well as anaerobic conditions. The larger rock will have larger spaces between them, so water will still move and some settling can occur, esp if you use 8" as the first layer as I did. Using the larger rock is like Aquablox, but a whole lot cheaper. Not as much 'open area' but still very functional. Here's something else I did that you may want to consider; I didn't use sched 40 pvc for my manifolds, I used 4" drain piping (the corrugated black pipe, the version without holes) and put my slits in that. What this gives is a larger diam pipe so it won't clog nearly as easily, it also helps the water slow and some solids settle out, and it's a lot cheaper--you can get a whole 50' roll for under $50 at Home Depot. You then just need an adaptor to mate the flex pvc to the corrugated drain pipe. I used a fernco adaptor and some sched 40 inserts but I THINK they have a one piece adaptor (been a while and that was my first bog).
You CAN use all pea gravel--addy did her bog that way but I'd still be leery because the thicker it is, the more chance of eventual clogging. Now, pea gravel is easy to move so that's a benefit (as opposed to trying to move/remove the larger stone; trust me, I've had to do it and the pea gravel was the easy layer!). If you go deeper as I did, then start to consider the shape and design more of your bog.
Some tips are; shape your walls to a 'V' so if you have to backflush, the water goes toward a central point. For easy cleaning/backflushing, mate up the manifolds to a low point and put in some sort of snorkel. It has to be large enough diameter to admit an aux pump to be lowered into it for ease of cleaning. You CAN use a larger diam drain pipe for this, but you may have to buy a 10' piece and it won't be cheap. What I did for bog v1 was to use a bunch of empty cat litter buckets I had to build me a 40" snorkel/vault. It was nice and rectangular and my sump pump fit in easily. For bog v2 I did it differently; because I was going to house my flag iris, I wanted a larger diam 'pot' for them and used a 30 gallon plastic garbage can; get a sturdy one or double up. I decided to also make THIS my vault. So, I did NOT connect my manifolds to this pot (there's holes in the bottom, 4" or so, to let water in) but instead, put it at the very lowest point understanding that any water will move to it naturally.
The way you clean a bog, should you ever have to, is to use your pond pump (high gallonage, good pressure, LOTS of volume) and you force water DOWN through the top. It then takes all the clogging detritus and whatnot down with it and it flows to the low point--your vault. A separte pump (the aux pump I spoke of) then pumps it out. I was told a typical cleanout/backflush process takes 2-3 times until clear water is achieved. The idea is you back force water, empty the bog, do it again until your bog water runs clean. And you'd move your top pump feed over the top pea gravel, forcing here there etc to get it all.
Hopefully, you'll never need to do this, but it helps if your bog is already prepared for such an event with 'V' shaped sides, a low point, a good sized vault, and an aux pump available. Too, the deeper you go, the more volume you have/the more SSA you have, which is why a bog works so well.
All that said, of course you'll still get a lot of benefit from JUST 12" of pea gravel--many have done this with success.
And don't forget; your bog walls and back should be at least 6" higher than the front/overpour as the water WILL rise over time and you don't want it leaking out. Too, consider some anti-siphon mechanism for when the power goes out; easy method is to drill a 3/8" hole at the high point of your bog inlet feed pipe. Make sure this hole in the pipe is OVER your liner/bog. Another tip is to have a ball valve AT the bog inlet so you can control how much water goes in.
I think were the bog mine, I'd go with a larger pump just because you're planning a huge bog (mine is 20' x 3' x 3' deep and I send about 4K gallons to it with a positive water overflow but nothing bursting etc. You can get a cheaper 4K pump from Harbor Freight; check it out.
Any concerns or clarifications, ask away!
:mrgreen:
