Just bought a new shop vac. It has an outlet where you can attach a garden hose. Had the pond cleaned up in no time. Used the garden hose to recirculate the water. Worked great! Pond is so pretty and clean and it did not take long since I didnt have to stop and empty to vac.
shop vac with a garden hose outlet
How powerful is it? I''ve thought about getting one but I've been afraid it would suck up my fish.
Is it this one? http://www.rewci.com/qpquvathpu.html
Looks very similar. It is 6 horsepower and holds 16 gallons. It is by shopvac and I got it at lowes for 99 bucks. It has a place on top where you can attach a garden hose. It was really neat because I did not have to stop to empty the water. It just pumped back out into the pond and left the gunk from the pond bottom in the bottom of the shop vac. I cleaned my pond in less then an hour. It does have quite a bit of suction, so I was nervous about sucking up some fish. I put on the smallest attachment (it does come with attachments) and didnt turn on the vac until I had the hose sitting on the bottom. Then I turned the vac off before pulling it up. I did take my plant pots out first. Amazingly , I did not suck up any fish. It did grab some smaller rocks that were in the bottom and lots of gunk. Today, the water and crystal clear and I can see the bottom again. Wow.
Good choice, I have one of those and we love it. If you are going to buy a shop vac to assist you with your pond cleaning it's the only way to go.
Sounds like the one DH got me for Christmas. It is nice at sucking up all the muck on the bottom... but the problem I had is that it sucks up water much quicker than it lets it back out. I had to keep shutting it off to let it catch up. It took me 2 - 6 hour days to clean the bottom of my pond with it. I suppose it would be a lot better on a "smaller" pond.
Yea, my pond is probably much smaller than yours. A couple of times I did have to shut off the vac to give the outflow time to catchup.
Do you guys use skimmers or pumps w/ traps?
I'm building a huge pond and I've gone overkill w/ pumps, filters, skimmer, antivortex main drain and on and on.
I can't wait but I need to learn from you guys. Would you have done anything different if you could now?
thanks, JD
This message was edited Apr 10, 2004 1:51 PM
oops........I moved the reply to JD to his thread.
This message was edited Apr 10, 2004 4:34 PM