Keeping Track of Water


2015-03-02 to 2015-??-??

 
I've been meaning to track how quickly our pond water evaporates after the rainy season is over.  This year I'll be taking a picture of it from the same place at the beginning of each month, so I can refer back to it for planning ahead.
 
What I'd like to do is set up a water tank next to the pond (where those two piles of dirt are, on the left edge in the first image) and put a sump pump into a bucket just inside the pond's waterline, so that it fills the tank when the pond is overfilled (and would just spill into the property downhill anyway) and not fill when the pond isn't full.  The tank would reduce the rate of evaporation, so we could retain more water year-around, and use it for watering the garden and such.
 
What we're going to do instead is dig a cistern at the lowest point on the property, put the water tank next to it, and fill it from the cistern.  I'm not as happy about that solution since it would be so far away from our garden and would have to be pumped uphill instead of gravity-fed to the garden, but it's better than nothing.
 

 
Please click on a thumbnail to view larger image.

 

2015-03-02: Our very full pond, after the rainy season was over -- or so I thought.  It ended up raining again (lightly) subsequent to this picture, on the nights of the 10th and the 22nd.

2015-04-01: It's showing signs of evaporation, but is still quite full.  For this shot I braced my camera on top of the gatepost instead of to the side of it, which I think resulted in a better-quality image.  Will be doing that from now on.  It rained subsequently on the 5th, 7th, and 24th.

2015-05-04: Noticeably lower now.  I'm guessing it will be mud by August.  It rained briefly on the 14th, subsequent to taking this picture.
    

2015-06-02:  Quite a lot lower now.  It rained briefly on the 1st, the day before taking this picture.

2015-06-02:  Taking a pic of the west side of the pond, to show it's already showing a lot of mud floor on the shallow end.

2015-06-02:  Taking a pic of the east side of the pond, where it's deepest.
    

2015-07-01:  Much lower now, but not quite all mud yet.  The part that is still full of water was deepened last summer, so it's actual about four feet deep there still.  It subsequently rained a bit on the 10th.

2015-08-03:  Yep, it's mud.  Let the record show that it took five months for our pond to go from overflowing to empty.  I probably won't take any more pictures of the pond until the rainy season, unless we do more work on it (dig it deeper, perhaps, or clean out ludwigia).

2015-08-03:  Taking a closeup of the pond bottom.  We cleared out the Ludwigia last summer, and it's reasserted itself quite firmly.
    


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