Installing the Diffuser

Installing the pond diffuser was a six-Advil project: two before starting work, two after finishing the work and two more at bedtime that night. It was also a two-hardware-store-visit job during the middle of the project.

An objective during this installation was for neither of us to get in the water at all! Although the fish, turtles, frogs, deer, birds and other wildlife like this water and it is safe and beneficial to them, it is not fit for human swimming or for human ingestion.

First, take a look at the diffuser and the air pump in the photos below.



Air pump, diffuser and air tube

 We ordered an electric genAir 484 that is designed to run constantly for seven years. The diffuser itself is a fairly simple device and hooking it up was not difficult. The green box is the air pump. The black tubing is hooked to the pump and the other end is hooked to the diffuser, the black square with the two round pieces attached on top. When the air pump is on, air flows through the tube and blows out the tiny holes in the two disks.

After wiring an electrical outlet in the well house (using supplies left by Dogwood’s prior owners) and finding a stable surface for the pump and testing it, we ran the 50’ weighted tubing that came with the diffuser from the pump in the well house down the slope toward the pond. Oops! The 50’ of tubing just barely reached the waters’ edge. To get the diffuser set even close to the center of the pond, we needed at least another 50’ of tubing; thus, the trip to the first hardware store. Since we figured the local hardware store would not have the specialized weighted tubing meant to sit is water for years, we decided to buy whatever proper sized tubing we could find and bury it from the well house to the pond in one inch PCV electrical pipe. We would fasten the weighted tubing that came with the diffuser to the end of hardware store tubing, hook it to the diffuse and run it out in the pond.

I started at Tractor Supply up on highway 290 just east of Brenham. I found a 50’ coil of the right size tubing but it was designed to spray agricultural liquid chemicals. I got it along with several sizes of clamps and couplings. I also made four calls back the Dogwood to make sure I was buying the right stuff. Unfortunately, Tractor Supply does not carry PVC pipe so, it was off to the local Home Depot where I bought 50’ of electrical PVC pipe which we could easily connect together. The sales staff at the Brenham Home Depot is very helpful and friendly, much more so than in the Houston Home Depot stores.

Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, Ronnie started the real work – digging the 50’ trench from the well house to the pond to bury the line so the cows don’t step on it and crush it or pull out the connections. What made this job so hard is the “black gumbo” soil on Old Dogwood. When it’s wet, it is gooey and sticky – it cakes on your boots making them heavy and it won’t drop-off the shovel unless scraped off. Digging and scraping makes for hard slow digging. But, when the gumbo is dry, it seems hard as cement and takes a pick axe to make any headway. That’s how it was digging this trench; it was dry, hard like cement. We took turns using that heavy pick-ax and then scoping out the dirt. I can’t swing the pick-ax because it is so heavy so I just hack at the ground. We dug the trench just a few inches deep.



Trench

 We decided that before finishing the trench and burying the pipe, we should deploy the diffuser in the pond. To do that, we hooked the air tubing together and to the diffuser, filled the diffuser base with sand (dug from a dry creek bed in the woods up the hill), put the plug in and tied a rope onto the diffuser base. To the end of that rope, we tied a longer rope. While one of us held the tubing in place at the end of the trench, the other took the long rope and walked to the other side of the pond. Once we were right across from each other, Ronnie slowly pulled the rope toward the other side of the pond and diffuser slowly sunk into the pond blowing bubbles. We had it turned on so we could see where it was as it moved underwater. As Ronnie pulled on the rope the diffuser moved toward the center of the pond. When all of the slack was nearly out of the tubing, we stopped and let the diffuser settle into the muck on the bottom, blowing bubbles all along. I was pretty impressed we managed to get it done without either of us getting wet! The diffuser is not quit in the center of the pond but close enough to do the job.

The next morning we finished digging the trench. Worried that once the pond filled to capacity again the PVC might float up our of the trench, we used some old cinder blocks and cinder block pieces to hold the pipe in place. We ran the PVC through the holes in the cinder blocks and buried them in the trench.



PVC held down by cinder blocks ready to be burried



The change in the pond is going to take some getting used to. The bubbling on the surface of the water is fairly gentle but every now and then it gurgles and splashes. At times it sounded like the creature from the Black Lagoon starting to rise out of the water! We hope that when the pond is full, there will be a bit less splashing but it’s really not loud, just different. Our next task is to determine if we need to restock with fish and if so, what kind.



Diffuser bubbling in center of pond