Heated Pond

[houie925]

Any advice on building a heated pond. Anybody here ever built one? Currently have one? I should be building one next summer for my RTCxTSN cat. I live in california and the weather here gets a few overnight frosts a year. dimensions will be about 20'lx10'wx4'd

[Drumachine09]

The only way I can think to heat a large pond (1000ish gallons) is with a waterheater heater.

[houie925]

any ideas on how to set up a thermostat for the water heater element? I could set up a low wattage servo switch to complete a circuit or something but it seems like that would be unreliable. or I could make a galileo thermometer type mechanism to complete a circuit but that seems complicated. anybody have any simple reliable methods? I haven't found any thermostats I could use that will handle the 2Kw used by the element

[houie925]

OK I think I have a relay switch system worked out. Any recommendations or ideas would still be appreciated

[Algenco]

you should soil temps during the winter , heating would cost a small fortune and may not be necessary

[Garden Rebel]

I'm also in the process of experimenting with a heating system for a large pond that I'm trying to keep semi-tropical year round.. Like the topic starter, we have mostly year round warm weather, except maybe 6 weeks of 50-70 cool weather, and maybe 1-2 nights near 30-40, but those temps are rare, most of the year is well into the range safe for most tropicals, especially hardy tropicals that can live in a non-heated indoor aquarium.

My most logical idea so far is not to try and keep the water heated because of the cold air temps, but instead to cover the pond with a temporary knock down clear plastic enclosure, similar to a very short small greenhouse, probably made with a 1-2 inch PVC pipe frame, covered by medium gauge clear vinyl. Then I'm quite sure a small electric room heater with a built in thermostat would work fine to keep the air temp at the surface of the water as warm as needed. If there is little air loss at the edges or seams of the enclosure, as well as solar heat from the sun helping, the cost of heating an outdoor pond wouldn't be nearly as high as trying to use underwater heating elements and fight the cold air temps constantly.

Any other comments or ideas would be great to hear.