Larry Lunsford

Just about every pond needs electricity to operate. We have all sorts of electrical devices in and around out ponds such as: water pumps, air pumps, UV filters, heaters, lights, monitoring equipment, etc. Most of our ponds would quickly become death traps for our Koi if it were to go without electricity. Here's some tips for making the wiring around your pond safe and reliable.

Use dedicated circuits. Most home builders try to squeeze every penny out of the cost of wiring. Its amazing how many outlets are on a single circuit breaker and the distribution is usually bizarre. Having dedicated circuits for your pond will free you from worries about accidentally shutting down your pond by tripping a seemingly unrelated breaker.

Use separate circuits for each critical device on your pond. You never know when a pump may fail or something may get stuck in it and cause it to trip a breaker. By having all important devices on their own circuits you won't have a complete shut down if one device fails.

Divide circuits between power legs. The power to your house comes in on two legs (wires). Devices that require 220V connect to both legs. Devices that only need 120V connect to one leg and common. Sometimes power failures will only affect one leg. By dividing your pond equipment between the two legs you can make it a little more reliable.

Use Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters (GFCI). A GFCI is a device that senses current flowing on the wires. If it senses an unequal current on hot and common, it shuts off power. This will protect you and your Koi from electrocution if you get in the path between hot and ground. HOWEVER: it will not help if you get in the path between hot and common. If you're going to grab a hold of hot and common, be sure to have your pockets full of jam cause you're gonna be toast. There are two types of GFCI you may want to use: those that mount in your breaker panel and those that are installed in an outlet box. I have found that the outlet box GFCIs are much more reliable than the breaker panel type plus they are much less expensive. I would suggest using normal circuit breakers and putting an outlet box style GFCI on each circuit. You can also get outlet box GFCIs with indicator lights which makes checking the power status easy. Install your GFCIs well away from your pond and in an area where they are not exposed to water. If the GFCI itself gets wet, it can fail and still allow power to flow to outlets that it is supposed to protect.

Mount outlets vertically and use weather resistant covers. This will minimize chances of water dripping into the box. Also, make connections on the bottom of electrical boxes to further reduce opportunities for water to drip in.

Run power cords so you have a drip loop. This simply means having power cords go down (and then back up if necessary) from the outlet. Any water that may land on the cord will fall off at the bottom of the drip loop instead of running on into the outlet.