CKP Pond Heating

Established 1995

pond heating

Talk to any experienced Koi Keeper and they will tell you that providing a stable, tepid to warm water temperatures on a year round basis is vital to long term success

In Toronto, good growth water temperatures (those over 20 Celsius) are only maintained for about 4 months of the year! We have hot short Summers that often don't get started until late May and are cooling down by mid-September

The bottom line is, if you truly want to be successful in this hobby in a temperate climate, you must heat your pond

Why Heat?
Koi are very hardy and can usually survive for years in challenging conditions. However, young, small and weak fish will sometimes die in the Spring as a direct result of a lengthy exposure to frigid water over Winter

Certainly the accumulated effect of enduring cold Winters year after year weakens a fish's constitution and will eventually be the catalyst for disease. Once your favourite fish is gone, its not coming back, and the rule of koi keeping is that if there is a problem, your best fish will be involved in the mishap

Ultimately, a shorter period of dormancy (2-3 months) and less frigid water temperatures (8 - 12 Celsius) are recommended. This will reset a Koi's biologically clock and purportedly increase life span as well as provide cues from spawning

Benefits of pond Heating
Fish Health & Growth
If you have any plans to grow jumbo Koi, then heating is essential. There also comes a point in time when it becomes foolish not to heat. You have invested a lot of time and money accumulating your Koi collection and it has likely appreciated in value. It seems short sighted not to set up a heating system to eliminate the real danger to our fish of prolonged exposure to cold water

Mature Filter
Your filter system can be operated year round and you will avoid the lengthy Spring seeding process. Better water quality is the result

Personal Enjoyment
You can also enjoy your fish for a much longer season. April in Toronto can be 5 degrees one day and jump to 25 the next. In a heated pond, the fish will avoid water temperature swings and you will be able to enjoy there high activity level on cold days

Two Heating Options
Electrical Heaters

Electrical heaters are not an economically viable option in most cases. Perhaps if you're in a warmer climate and just want to augment you Winter temperatures slightly, then electrical heating may be the best way to proceed. They are much less expensive to purchase than a gas system however running costs are substantially higher. You will require a very large heater, in the kilowatt range to effect any real increase in water temperature. For example, ie. 2 watts a gallon will raise water temperatures only 3 degrees celsius (approx.) without the wind chill

Gas Powered

It is certainly not Clarke Koi's mandate to discredit other approaches to heating your pond. However, in our experience both of the options pictured right have weaknesses you likely want to avoid. I did purchase a Kozy Koi unit to test out as I was considering retailing them. I will not go into a long diatribe (and it is very long) suffice to say tread softly if considering this unit. Reading "Design Considerations" below will explain why

Gas Powered - Open Loop or Closed Loop?
I prefer an open loop system because they are much easier to fill and monitor. Also think about what will happened when there is a power failure. Will the water drain out of the system or stay in the lines? Closed loops need to be purged of air in order to work properly and they invariably lose some water over time

Design Considerations
Inevitably, you can count on both power outages and mechanical failures. When these occur during the Winter the potential for freezing and cracking is a real possibility. The heat exchanger is the most expensive part of the heater so if it's cracked by freezing, you have a major repair expense. But even if your heater incurs no damage, how do you get things operational when they are frozen solid?

If you know what your doing you can bypass the safety pressure or flow switch to get the heater to fire and melt the ice. This is not an easy job with bare hands in frigid weather and your could melt your core. Therefore, the only safe, logical conclusion is to run the system using propylene (motor home) not ethylene (automotive) glycol. Ethylene is quite toxic and responsible for many dog deaths annually. Remember, ask yourself "What If".

Glycol will lower the freezing temperature to under -20 Celsius when mixed with water in a 30% mix. So, if you have a power outage or your pump dies, your heater is safe from cracking. You will also be able to fire your heater up and resume heating your pond once power is restored or the faulty pump replaced. This is key - getting your system back online

So the two main points are not only the expensive damage that can occur, but also getting your system back on-line as soon as possible before your pond temperature drops too much. On the downside, a glycol system requires a second pump so therefore costs more to setup and run

Design Keys - What we Do
Clarke Koi installs regular gas pool heaters with copper heat exchangers. But we use an additional external stainless steel heat exchanger which ensures that no copper enters the pond. Another benefit is no pond water goes through the pool heater which can cause heater clogging over time

But there are always disadvantages. Stainless steel does not conduct heat as effectively as copper does but is not toxic to fish like copper is. The heater will therefore have to be on longer which obviously creates a higher gas bill. You will also need a second pump to run the heating loop of the system

So in essence, with our system, there are 2 loops which are separate but both meet at the heat exchanger - the warm pond loop and the hot heating loop. The heat exchanger has 2 separate passages one for pond water the other for the heated water/glycol mix. They don't physically mix, but a heat transfer takes place as the hot water loses its heat to the pond water - basic conduction

Last Modified : January 18, 2007
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