Last weekend we were starting to feel a bit like Mario and Luigi, the little Italian plumbers of Nintendo fame. Not that we were rescuing princesses, racing around in karts or running through strange worlds killing mushroom-like things. No, none of that at all, even though it would, I must admit, make a pleasant change from our usual routines, but we were playing with pipes and fixings. We were for the weekend plumbers... of sorts.I'm sure you are now thinking, why am I reading about plumbing on a gardening blog? (well maybe not) but what were we up to?
Regular readers know all about the Koi pond we are currently building, and even more regular readers will know that last weekend we spent quite a bit of time working out the layout for the filters, well it was time to start connecting them!
We knew that this part of the project would be quite fiddly, no two supplier of pond equipment use quite the same sized pipes, and to be honest even with the same manufacturer they can use different sizes on differing products. However last weekend we were starting with the easy bit, attach the skimmer (which collects leaves from the surface of the pond, and attach the two bottom drains to the sieves. The sieves filter out any larger particles that collect on the bottom of the pond, the water then is passed through the rest of the filters before going back to the pond, in a never ending cycle.
The skimmer turned out to be much more fiddly than expected, these things always are, but we got it firmly attached and by using a product called "Black Gold" sealed up the join nice and tight.
Cutting through the membrane that has kept the skimmer separate to the filter house all this time.
Far more enjoyable, if you can really use that word, was connecting up the sieves. We had planned the layout last weekend, but once we had picked up the fittings we realised that we had not really given ourselves enough space, so have rotated them round 90degrees. On reflection this is a much better layout and will make connecting them to the other filters an easier job (I hope that sentence doesn't prove to be "famous last words"!).
The sieves in what will be their final position raised on concrete blocks.
To get the height of these right, Mark shifted a number of heavy concrete blocks to form a base, these do not need to be cemented together, so it was a quick job in stacking them in place.The sieves were placed on top and then the jigsaw of working out how the pipes needed to connect could begin. It goes without saying that we had to have a quick trip back to the supplier to get a couple more fixings, but after that they did all fall into place fairly easily. Whilst it took quite a while to do, it was genuinely enjoyable, there's something quite nice about a job well done, even if it takes us a lot longer than a professional would take.
After carefully marking the pipes that come into the filter house these were cut to allow the new pipes to be connected.
Not a mini guillotine but a gate valve for closing the pipes for filter maintenance.
Knickers decided to help...
All connected up with the skimmer in the background.
Valves, bends, connectors, all in place, Mario would be proud!
Jobs for next weekend!
Next weekend we have the slightly more complicated job of figuring the connections from the sieves to the rest of the filters to work out, wish us luck!Gaz
