Pond Solver Articles | Choosing Fixtures & Fittings For Your Garden Pond

In many respects the most annoying part of putting a pond together is assembling all the right fittings to match up to the different pieces of equipment: pump, fountain, UV, filter inlet and outlet and so on. The task is made simpler by buying products from one manufacturer but even this can create difficulties.

In this section I have given you some general tips that you might want to follow if you wish to keep frustration levels down especially at maintenance time.

Garden Pond Pipe Work And Hose

Preferably use Ribbed Flexible Hose if you can find it even though it is more expensive than clear plastic. This is what it looks like

The reasons are as follows:

• The most important reason is that this pipe does not kink and restrict flow and can therefore be used to go around obstacles such as tree trunks.
• The diameters available match standard pipe fittings.
• The inside surface is smooth ensuring good flow of water.
• The pipe is opaque and therefore algae growth inside the pipe is minimized.

Pipe lengths should always be minimized. Pipe lengths of about 3 metres long will reduce flow from the pump by about 5% if the correct diameter is used. If small diameter pipe is used this could increase to 25%.

Do not reduce pipe diameters by using reducers or clips unless absolutely necessary. Avoid bends and especially right angle corners because they restrict flow from the pump quite considerably. When bends are necessary and this is quite frequently use smooth curves in the pipe.

This is one of the major benefits of ribbed hose - it is easily curved without restriction.

If you use transparent hose take care that it is not kinked or flattened underneath stones, or other items used to hide the pipe. Also try to shield this type of pipe from direct sunlight. You will almost certainly find after a few months the pipe will need to be cleaned out … it may become clogged with algae.

If you do use transparent hose go for the thicker walled material.

Pipes and fittings costs can seem to be a disproportionate cost within the system but it is an area that should not be skimped on.

In the picture below the pump’s suction strainer has been placed at a remote location where water is cleaner (ie not close to bottom). This is a useful way to position a pump if you have the fittings.

Garden Pond Fittings

Pond Pipe Fittings are used to connect pipes to equipment, to increase or decrease pipe diameters (reducers) to go around bends, and so on. There are sockets (female screw threads) and adaptors (male screw threads).

Try and buy equipment that can use threaded fittings because these are less likely to leak and are easy to assemble and disassemble by hand. Try to avoid fittings that need to be glued to a component.

Everything in life is a trade-off. So it is with fittings - sit down and decide whether you want to have a hassle free pond or are you prepared to have hassles, if not now then certainly in the future.

My advice is buy the best fittings you can afford. Avoid the hassles. This is one area where I certainly take my own advice.

Metric And Imperial Conversion Tables

Some people talk in inches and others in millimeters, some in gallons and some in litres. To complicate matters further there are imperial gallons and US gallons.

Inevitably you will come across both in pond keeping so use these simple conversion factors if necessary:

• To convert gallons to litres multiply by 4.54
• To convert gallons to US gallons multiply by 1.2
• To convert US gallons to litres multiply by 3.78
• To convert cu.feet to gallons multiply by 6.23
• To convert cu.feet to US gallons multiply by 7.48
• To convert inches to cm multiply by 2.54
• To convert feet to metres multiply by 0.305
• To convert pounds to kilograms multiply by 2.2
• To convert sq. feet to sq. Metres multiply by 0.093
• To convert cu metres to litres multiply by 1000
• Of course to convert in the other direction you divide by the factor. For example to convert litres to gallons you would divide by 4.54.

Here is the chart you saw earlier …. Perhaps you prefer this format

Check out my Pond Calculators to help make the conversions easier...

Pumps, Pipes and Friction

I promised to talk more about friction loss in pipes simply because it is important to remind people who have complex pond piping systems. In such systems and also if you want to really reduce your pump costs to the absolute minimum consistent with ideal performance you must do rigorous calculations.

When water is pumped through a pipe some of its energy is lost because the water slides along the walls of the pipe creating friction losses. As you can imagine these losses increase with the rate of flow (velocity) of the water.

The practical implication of this when specifying a pump for your pond is that you must estimate how much friction losses are taking place. This amount of loss which can also be described as “head loss” must be added to the height the pump is required to pump to.

Note that this loss can be very significant in long pipes and narrow diameter pipes.

If you use more than 3 metres of pipe length, pump more than 2,000 litres per hour and especially if you use narrow tubing you MUST calculate the friction losses or decide to opt for at least 1 size bigger and maybe 2 sizes bigger pump and/or a wider/shorter pipe.

Check out my Pond Calculators to help make the conversions easier...

In addition to the pipe friction loss, losses also occur when valves are used in a system. Losses also occur in restricted pipes, bends and so on. These tend to be about 20% of the pipe friction loss. While they can be calculated it is unnecessary for garden ponds.

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