Pond Pump electrics type stuff

[Rob]

Premise: I have a small pond with goldfish and stuff in it. It is about 8ft by 4ft and varies between 3ft to 1 ft deep. I run a tiny little pump (now used just as a fountain) and also a "dirty water" pump that feeds a pipe into a brick enclosure wherein I have a biofilter with UV lamp, that feeds back out into the pond. All the feed pipes are about 1" dia and I inherited them with the pond when I moved into the house. Previously I was running 3 electric feeds (pump, UV lamp and fountain pump) from one switch box in the brick enclosure. It started to get a bit flakey and the little pump seemed to working on and off so I went and bought a new 3-way switch this afternoon.

 

Since installing it and cleaning all the pumps, the little pump burnt itself out. This may be coincidence as it seemed a bit dodgy anyway, and I was running it out of the pond when this happened. However, I have previously run it dry with no ill effects.

 

Also the biofilter fed by the big pump now overflows. There is too much water going into it for the outlet pipe to drain, even after thoroughly cleaning it all out. I have effected a temporary workaround by moving it next to the pond and having it drain directly into the edge of the pond.

 

Can this new switch be providing less resistence, or giving more current, and making the pumps overwork? I know little of electrickery but the filter never overflowed when the big pump was brand new and spotlessly clean.

[Tricky-Ricky]

Most pond pumps are made to run immersed in water, not dry, so that could be your problem, if the switch is just a switch then i doubt that will cause any problem, unless of course you wired it up wrong.

[suprasurrey]

Have you checked that the outlet pipe from your biofilter is not blocked or kinked? I don`t think that your new switches would be at fault, the pump will draw whatever current it wants. As for your smaller pump burning out, It`s never a good idea to let them run dry as they rely on water flow to cool them.

[paul mac]

if its overflowing you must have some internal resistance, check the filter medium to see if its blocked

[Wez]

As already mentioned the pumps are not designed to run dry and will burn out quickly.

 

The external filter/UV box overflowing is the same prob I had during the summer as a result of me cleaning everything, the lifter pump, filter unit and return lines. Once cleaned everything flowed so much better which caused my waterfall and filter box to overflow.

 

After a week or so the lifter pump had some muck around it again and the flow settled enough to stop the box overflowing, I also raised the box a little higher.

 

Ponds are great but during the summer my external filter/UV unit needed cleaning min every two weeks and most of the time every weekend.

[Rob]

Ponds are great but during the summer my external filter/UV unit needed cleaning min every two weeks and most of the time every weekend.

 

That's what I was doing, hence buying the bigger "dirty water" pump. While I was hosing off the filter, I must have been gob-open like the mouth breathing Dartford inbred I am, as I was always off-work on a Monday, beating a camel into the kingdom of heaven, or summat.

 

All pipes and filters were cleaned out, so its not that, and as I said, the pump when brand new never overflowed the filter tank.