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| Where did all the water go? |  |
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| Contributed by Steve & Hilary Brown | |
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Where did all the water go? So there I was, 3.30pm on September 28th 2007, hose pipe in hand, trying to water my Bonsai stock. Why is this time so precisely etched in my memory? It became one of those times in your life you won't forget in a hurry, a bit like when Kennedy was shot. I say trying to water my Bonsais because, although the water pressure in Wollaston wouldn't blow your hat off, it's normally enough to have a decent squirt, if you see what I mean. There just wasn't enough water to make it worth the effort. ‘Why not', you must by now be saying to yourself. I started thinking about what else could be using the water, when I realised I could hear water running into the pond, which has an automatic top up. The pond had been losing a little, and I do mean little, water for a couple of years so I wasn't unduly alarmed at this point, so I did what any reasonable, self respecting Koi Keeper would do. Put the kettle on! After an hour I decided that the pond must be full and would have to get the trees watered before dark. But the pond wasn't full. It wasn't even as full as it was before tea up. What to do? Leave the top up running and wait another hour to see what was going to happen. Have another cup of tea? Not likely, that water was going to be needed. A quick check around the pond, and of all the likely leakage points, showed absolutely no sign of any quantity of the precious wet stuff. I left the top up running all of a (worrying) Friday night, and went out very early on Saturday morning to see how bad things were. Even with the top up going full blast the level had dropped about 3 inches overnight. So how bad was this leak? I turned the top up off and went about getting some breakfast and all the other morning chores. An hour or so later it was down visibly by about half an inch. This was looking like a leak of catastrophic proportions. Briefly, or those of you who don't know my pond, it is 6 feet deep, half in and half out of the ground, built of brick on a concrete foundation beam with a butyl rubber liner. The pond incorporated a separate vegetable filter and two large multi chamber filters, also made of brickwork. The total capacity was somewhere around 5000 gallons At this point I should like to explain why I was taking so long to ‘do' anything about the loss of water, and maybe convey something of the mild panic I was feeling. Well for a start, when I first noticed something was wrong the previous day, I hadn't been doing anything that might have provoked a leak. No water changes, pond cleaning, or other maintenance activity. The pond has been running non stop for about 15 years with just the aforementioned slight leakage from the vegetable filter. Now it was looking like it would be empty within 12 hours with no visible sign of a leak. I couldn't see anything to fix so what was I supposed to do? Phone somebody and get some help. There are some very able and experienced Koi Keepers in the Northants Club, and I like to think I know a bit about the subject myself. If a club member called me with the same problem, I think I would be able to offer some rational, practical advice on how best to go about sorting this mess out. But it was happening to ME, and all I could think about was the welfare of my precious Koi. And they don't teach you about emergency Koi re-location and leak management at HLO School! But where would you put 30 Koi in an emergency like that? It's not asking for much, all you need is a large empty pond with a mature filter and a (willing) somebody with the knowledge to look after them. How would you cope with this if it happened to your pond right now, while you were reading this? That was the situation I felt I was in. I'm not claiming to be heroic or clever in the solution I found, just very lucky. The conversation went something like this: ‘Hello Barrie' ‘Hello Steve, how's it going?' ‘Have you got room for 30 large Koi in your pond?' Nervous silence. ‘Did you hear me Barrie?' So Barrie and I spent most of Saturday the 29th transporting fish to his pond. This was quite an urgent situation for my Koi. By the time Barrie and I finished moving the last of them at about 4pm; close on 3000 gallons of water had gone from my pond. Many uninitiated people might say 'They're only fish, you could get some more'. But you folks reading this will know it's not like that. It's personal. We are Koi Keepers. I am often asked by customers about the worth of my Koi. Not that they are any more valuable than anybody else's Koi, but it is a common mis-conception that every Koi has cost a fortune. They are valued in terms of every single minute spent caring for them, and every bead of sweat expended in building and maintaining a suitable home for them. If I may express an opinion, if you value your Koi in financial terms, you are missing the point of having them. Forgive me if I sound a little over sentimental about my Koi, but I have had some great times associated with this hobby. It has been very rewarding to be a member of the Northants Koi Club with the meetings and trips out both here and abroad, the knowledge gained from my time spent as a member of the Koi Health Forum, and the camaraderie associated with buying and showing Koi. And the fantastic experience of buying Koi in Japan. I would like to say a public ‘Thank You' to Barrie Bird. If it had not been for the fortunate circumstance of his pond being very lightly stocked, and his immediate, unquestioning agreement to house my Koi for an indeterminate period, I would quite likely have been in some very sticky stuff indeed. I'm sure some of the Northants membership would have been happy to help out given the opportunity, but I needed to rehouse my Koi extremely quickly, and I was very lucky that Barrie was willing and able to help out. I left the pond for the next few days to see just how far the water level would drop; hoping that it wouldn't be too catastrophic and it would just be a matter of sticking a patch over a hole in the liner. Well it went all the way down to the corner between the bottom of the pond and the vertical walls, leaving about 8 inches of water above the bottom drain flange and well below the level of the floor in the filters. The pond is not connected directly to the main sewer, so there should have been some sign of all this water visible around the pond. There was nothing to see, no soggy patch of garden, no neighbours screaming over the garden wall. I think it's fair to say that an intelligent analysis of the results would indicate the leak was a) Nothing to do with bottom drain itself as the water remained well above it. b) Nothing to do with the filters because the final level went well below them. c) Quite likely to be caused by a shift or break in the bottom drain pipe work feeding the filters because this was the only weak point between the bottom of the pond and the floor of the filters. Regardless of the actual site of the leak one thing was now certain, the liner would have to be removed in order to inspect the pipes for damage. It was beginning to look costly both in terms of time and money, neither of which I had in abundance or planned to spend on pond reconstruction. We all have jobs or occupations of one sort or another with their own problems, but working from home in a retail business has its own set of unique problems. Apart from the actual day to day routine activities of running a Bonsai nursery, no sooner would I climb down in to the pond to start work than the phone would ring, or customers would call, or a delivery would arrive, and so on. So my investigation in to the cause of the leak went on and on and I was losing the initial drive to sort it out. I was acutely aware of the need to get the pond back up and running as soon as possible before the winter weather set in and my fish were unable to return. And the way things were going I wasn't going to achieve very much doing it myself. Added to all this, I'm no builder. To cut a long story short, Barrie agreed to rebuild the pond for me and Steve from Avenue fisheries was engaged to replace the defective pipework and fit a new liner. The first major obstacle we found on removing the old liner was that the concrete foundation had cracked across the sides at the back of the pond causing the brickwork above to crack through. You may well think that this was the cause of the leak, but there was absolutely no damage to the liner attributable to the cracks. This needed underpinning with concrete before any brickwork could be replaced. Over the next 8 weekends Barrie and I dismantled the pond brickwork and rebuilt it ready for a new liner to be installed as soon as the pipework had been rectified. I then got a call from Avenue saying that Steve had injured his back and wouldn't be able to do the work, so they just supplied the liner. Barrie suggested I call Keith Jackson who is an experienced ground worker and might help out. I called Keith and asked him if he could help out with the pipe repairs, which he agreed to do. It's time for another vote of thanks. All this time I had assumed that the pipework was the cause of the leak for two good reasons. One is that where the water level finished was roughly where the weakest part of the bottom drain pipes was, and the second is that we had found no evidence of a leak anywhere else. Fortunately for me Keith approached the problem in a more rational manner than I had, and decided to test the pipes before digging it all up. It soon became apparent that the pipes were ok, and Keith saved me from a lot of potentially expensive and exhausting digging. Thank you Keith. On the face of it these seem very simple problems to sort out. However I'm sure we have all been in a situation where somebody has suggested trying something really simple that you just hadn't thought of because you're too busy thinking about the difficult stuff and it has saved the day. Keith also helped me install the new liner, and then Barrie returned to finish the brickwork above the water level. All in all it took 12 working days to dismantle 60% of the brickwork, repair the foundations and rebuild the pond, and install the liner. Remarkable considering that the three people involved, myself, Barrie , and Keith, all had better things to do with their time other than mess about with my pond. And we never did find any likely cause of a leak. No tears, no splits, no broken pipes. Nothing. Steve Brown Cherry Blossom Bonsai Tel :44 0 1933 665383 |
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