How much water should my pond be loosing?

13 years ago

My pond is new so I'm still learning what is normal. It seems to loose about 1/2 inch a day. Is this normal? It's 300 gallons and gets sun about half of the day. I'm in the Dallas, Tx area so it's already fairly warm here. It's lost this amount of water since day 1 so I'm assuming this is ok, but I wanted to check. I can't imagine there would be a leak. I used the 45 mil liner and an underlayment (both bought at a very reputable local pond supply store) and I don't have the filter hooked up yet so that's one less place it could be leaking from.

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Comments (4)

cherokee_joeshoeboot
13 years ago
That amount of evaporation may not be excessive. There are lots of factors that will effect evaporation, like heat, wind,humidity and water surface area. Other factors that may contribute to evaporation are things that agitate the water surface like water falls, aeration and streams. Overall I think you are within a normal evaporation amount.
sleeplessinftwayne
13 years ago
Joe is correct. There are disastrous losses and there are insignificant losses. We would have to know a lot more to judge whether this particular loss is significant for example, do you have a fountain or spitters? Since these expose more water surface to the warm air and so to more evaporation, their use would lead you to expect more water loss.For the most part you could say that if it isn't adding water to the pond, there is a water loss somewhere.

Look around all sides of the pond. Is there any spot outside the pond interior that appears moist or even slightly damp? If you have a waterfall, is there any splash? Like spitters and fountains, splashing exposes the water to the air which causes evaporation. Are there any connectors exposed to the air? Are they absolutely tight? What is the water temperature? What is the air temperature? If you do not top off the pond water does the water loss continue or does it stop or level off at some point?

Are there a lot of plants? Plants use up water through their roots and lose it through their leaves. Are there plants or anything else that drape into the pond? These can siphon off water. A piece of liner draped over another can cause water loss through convection(that water just climbs right up between the layers).

Hope we can help (with more info from you).
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aggierose
Original Author
13 years ago
I do have a waterfall. It splashes but from what I can tell nothing splashes out but it does of course land on the rocks. I don't have any plants in or around the pond yet. Those are coming. I do know that some water is creeping up the liner and into the surrounding dirt between the rocks. I'm trying to adjust the rocks so that I can have it as full as possible which also hides the entire liner. Is there a way to keep this from happening? I don't have a thermometer so I don't know what the water temp is, but the temps here all last week were in the 60's and 70's and some days in the 80's. There aren't any connectors exposed at all.
kalevi
13 years ago
I think you are losing a bit more than you should. I bet your waterfall is the culprit.