Those of you that have been following this story closely will know we’ve had some “interesting times” with the duck pond pump. To the extent that the third replacement pump didn’t work either... But this time Santa may just have gotten his ducks in a row!

Shelter-tray

In anticipation of the fourth replacement pump, which was to arrive together with four small non-intrusive water-lilies and a handful of silver perch, I concocted a little fish shelter / lily tray.

It’s a bit wobbly, and it cost me a “wade” to install it – luckily the water was very warm – but now it houses the lilies nicely in the middle of the pond.

Pond pump

And so the pump saga continued… the fourth replacement pump, a massive upgrade with complements of the supplier – Solair Group, was as dead as a door nail. To cut a very long story very short, I ended up trouble-shooting the whole installation using a multi-meter with Jordan from Solair Group on speakerphone. It ended up that one of the connectors (between solar panels 3 and 4) was badly corroded. There was nothing wrong with the pump, probably not with the previous pumps either… Even with just three panels running, the pump was guzzling water through the biological filters and down the stream!

After a bit of sandpapering on the terminals of the connector, I got all four panels to work. Now the pump was pushing so much water through, I had to remove some of the rocks from the stream, because the top two ponds were overflowing because the stream couldn’t cope with the flood. Happiness is running water – easily one of the best Christmas gifts ever!!

I must commend Jordan and his team at Solair Group – they persisted and supported our local supplier with endless information and replacement pumps until our system was running perfectly. We are extremely happy with it now – even on partly cloudy days we get a really good flow through the biological filters and down the stream.

Happy Christmas!

We wish all our friends, family and readers a very Blessed Christmas!!