You learn more from your failures than you do from your successes. Plus it's good to laugh at yourself. Hopefully people learned from my trial & error (and laughed). Thanks for the kind words

Haha glad you enjoyed it! It wasn't funny at the time but I thought it was important to show the struggles. Thanks for watching!

Oh yeah there's lots of blood, sweat & tears (and frustration) between big ideas and results! Thanks for watching!

Glad you enjoyed it! It wasn't funny then, but I can laugh at it now haha

Gotta be able to laugh at yourself!

Good luck! Hopefully you can avoid some of my mistakes! The siphon is amazing when it works properly

Yes, that was painful to watch trying to get the siphon to work. Run the outlet into the creek water, then all you need at the top is a tiny hole in a fitting and a vacuum hose to a vacuum source. Even a 1/4" ID vinyl hose would work. I like to use a gas engine for the vacuum source, but use a jar so you don't suck water into the engine. Start that siphon in two minutes with no effort. Or, dig into the dam, bury the pipeline and use a cap on the uphill side of the pipe. The drain will be very useful in the future, to remove suspended sediment, and nutrient rich water.

Thank you for the kind words! As far as sequels, there's Part 2 (Dredging), and Part 3 (Fish Structure) on the "Lake Restoration" playlist on my channel. Part 4 (Dock) will be out in about a week and Part 5 (Fish Stocking) won't be far behind 🤙

Thank you! I appreciate the kind words

I'll take your word for it, thanks!

Oh yes kill me now!! thass wahm talkin bout!!! @1:50 Pls pls pls tell me she's yours!!! I had to watch this at least 37 times-- okay some of those were in extreme slow motion-- this woman is what I live and aspire to and lie awake at night thinking about.... Thank you dear God.

Thanks and yeah I don't want to eliminate all the plants but the hydrilla was out of control. The muck was the main reason for draining/dredging. Thanks for reaching out, it's cool to hear from people all over the world!

Hydrilla is worthless.

Thanks!

Well I guess we have a pond! Thanks for clearing that up!

That too haha

Can not see that any angle comes into play here. The input must be higher than the output. The tubing must be airtight. Output must be restricted in som way to prevent air from entering via the output. A simple way is simply tu expel the water under the surface of the river. In a smaller system you may just use a bucket.

Our lake overflow drains into the creek anyway. All man-made ponds/lakes drain into some other waterway. We met with someone from the department of natural resources who actually helped us set up the original siphon. We tried to put as little silt into the creek as possible, that got dredged out and piled in our yard to dry out and was later spread as topsoil.

I would think so. It is 50 years worth of organic, decomposed leaves mostly. I'm counting on it being great topsoil in our new backyard this spring. It did have a lot of small rocks in it though. I'll update how grass grows in a future video

Here's a link to the whole series: Lake Restoration: kzfaq.info/sun/PLsvSrcJB64oY7ZAe-QOXheaBx68gqJ1xT

Rain water in addition to several drains in the driveway above that feed into the lake. There are rumors of a natural spring but I haven't seen much evidence of that. I had grandiose plans of draining the lake completely and transplanting the fish but several people brought up the good point that I'd have to trudge through the heavy muck with a net full of fish and it would probably be a disaster. Part of me still wishes I gave it a try but it's nice having an established fish population still

Learned a lot from my mistakes

Exactly!

The creek doesn't have enough flow to siphon back into the lake. But we ran a trash pump from the creek and that worked pretty well

@@CityBillyAdventures To be honest, your 6" syphon is the biggest I've ever seen for the purposes of draining a pond. That size of pipe will move 2.2X as much water as just a 4" pipe. A 6" syphon is fast, very aggressive and a lot to handle. If you wanted to reverse it to refill your pond from the creek (to the highest extent possible in your pond), then a 3" syphon system would work really well... except that it would only deliver water at the rate of 25% the volume (per hour) as a 6" system. But so what? It would work flawlessly and take just a few relaxing days. Your creek is awesome and it could feed that amount of flow very easily. That method would also offer an automatic shutoff with no possible bad after effects, LOL. I'm serious... you might want to try that if filling your pond any other way is a problem or concern (such as if you might have to pump it all (or drain your well) in order to refill the pond). I any case, I got a big kick out of your video. You have a very likeable style. Thank you so much. Lots of love from Canada. PS: In the off chance that you might want to try my suggestion for refilling the pond... set your intake "at the creek" at the highest possible elevation in the creek... even if you might have to go upstream a few hundred feet. The higher your 'source', the higher it will fill your lovely pond before the maximum is achieved. For what it's worth, I'm an older guy, but an engineer. 👊

All great and very interesting advice! Could have used you last fall! The lake is full now, we decided to do it the hard way haha. Definately figuring it out as we go. Glad you enjoyed the journey. There's been a few update videos posted since this one, if you didn't see them. Part 4 will be out in a week or two (building a dock). Thanks for taking the time to reach out 🤙

Tell that to the many of vehicles in the 70s and 80s