Ron’s Folly

 When Ron first announced that he was creating a siphon for the pond, I had to admit I was skeptical.   There’s over a million gallons of water in the pond.  The berm around it is at least 4 feet above the water level.  And there’s no electricity.  Even if he could figure out a way to build it, how would he get it started?    

Before I go much farther into this post, you’re probably wondering why a siphon?  The theory is if we could drop the level of the pond by about 4 feet during the winter, this would kill off the weeds in the shallow banks.  So after a lot of thinking and planning, researching on the Internet and multiple trips to Menards, Ron fashioned his siphon out of 40 feet of 3” PVC pipe.  Priming it proved to be more of a challenge that we thought, but in the end he got to work !   Now we wait until spring to see if it has any effect on the weeds.  But I learned my lesson…never underestimate the engineering genius of my husband. 

picking up the piping from Menards

3″ PVC pipe

Ron opens the gate valve

siphon is running

panoramic shot of the pond

The pond after siphoning