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Some New Videos from Our Homestead — 2 Comments

  1. Loving the videos Jack.  Thanks for taking the time to produce them.  Great ideas.

    Not sure I understand the plans for the new timber frame pond with surrounding wicking beds.  Are you using the sump to keep the wicking beds at that comfortable height?  If the wicking beds drain into a sump which is lower than the timber frame pond, a failure of the sump pump or float switch would allow the timber pond to empty water down to the level of the pump in the timber pond (1/2 of the water) and perhaps damage that pump.

    • Okay as I said what you need to understand is that this system is MORE not less resilient this way. Say the pump in the pond fails, the wicking beds could sit there for a week or more unaffected because well they are wicking beds kept full in a continuous flow. The Ebb and flow beds fill from the pump in the sump, so they keep going. Yes this is bad for the pond but on shear volume it will be fine until fixed, we will likely have O2 pumping to it as well.

      Now say the sump pump fails, well we will have a second back up cheapo pump in there set higher, like a 75 dollar harbor freight one that will never run unless the good one fails. Further even if we didn’t do that, if the sump failed it would over flow until the level of the pond dropped to the float switch, in which case you are in the same place you would be with one pump, its a problem but no larger of a problem.