Spring into Action Now for a Beautiful Lake in the Summer

By Patrick Simmsgeiger, Founder of DWI

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Natural waterways may appear to maintain their beauty and health without any special attention. So, it can be easy for us to presume that our man-made ponds, lakes, and streams will fare just as well with little intervention. But in reality, quite the opposite is true.

Because of environmental factors and human impact, natural waterways require constant monitoring and care. That is why our cities, counties, and states spend significant financial and human resources in order to preserve these natural wonders and maintain water quality.

Things aren’t so different for our man-made aquatic features. The beautiful ponds, lakes, and moving water that we design into our landscapes also require monitoring and maintenance in order to keep them beautiful and healthy.

We have all seen it- that problem pond that looks like an opaque bowl of split pea soup or the lake that has so much muck floating around you can hardly see the water (all of which are due to common algae). Or, we’ve witnessed a sudden and inexplicable die-off of aquatic life, like fish or plants. Problems such as these are unsightly and putrid at best. At worst, they can pose a health threat as a source for mosquitoes that spread deadly diseases like the West Nile Virus.

We all recognize when problems occur but how many of us can effectively diagnose and treat them? And how can we prevent such conditions in the first place?

One important bit of advice would be to emphasize proper design when creating our aquatic features. But, as it is likely that many of you have already installed or “adopted” an existing aquatic feature, this bit of advice may not be helpful for everyone. And keep in mind, even the best designs aren’t immune to water quality issues.

Also, remember to set aside adequate financial resources to maintain and, if needed, replace the complex equipment that operates your aquatic features. Many water quality issues can be traced to inadequate, failing, faulty equipment such as pumps, filters, drainages, and more. As is often the case, this is an aspect of maintenance that is overlooked or neglected due to a lack of understanding, a lack of budget or both.

Trying to manage all of this can seem intimidating and overwhelming- especially if your aquatic features are already experiencing water quality issues. This is where the services of an aquatic maintenance provider might be of real help.

A licensed, knowledgeable, and experienced professional can provide the foresight and insight to help keep our aquatic features healthy and attractive by not only solving problems quickly and efficiently, but also offering an effective strategy of preventative maintenance. This can save you significant amounts of time, money, and frustration in the long run. And that means being able to enjoy the peacefulness and beauty of your aquatic features all the more.

Spring Lake Care

By Patrick Simmsgeiger, Founder of DWI

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The summertime beauty and function of a pond, lake, or water feature can be seriously threatened by problems that actually develop during the winter. Algae, aquatic weeds, fish kills, and odors are all caused by a buildup of debris and a lack of oxygen. These conditions develop during the fall and winter. The time to start preventing summer disasters is in the spring.

The water in our lakes is actually a solution of various chemicals and contains suspended organic materials. Various techniques enable water to achieve equilibrium — where natural decomposition is balanced with the amount of chemicals and organic materials entering the water. A program of clarification, proper water circulation, and sunlight suppression can correct winter contamination. These are far more desirable than severe measures, such as dredging and mechanical weed control.

Many things happen during the winter that disrupt the equilibrium of water bodies. Some of the most obvious are increased debris from trees and activity from migrating and native waterfowl. Some things take place that you can’t see. Rainfall increases during the winter. Rainfall contains a surprising amount of nitrogen picked up from the atmosphere. Runoff caused by rainfall also moves fertilizers and debris from the watershed into the lake. Rainfall can also change the chemical balance (pH) of water bodies.

More importantly, the process of biodegradation slows during the winter. The organisms in the water that break down leaves, bird waste, and dead fish function very slowly, if at all. They simply can’t keep up. When temperatures rise in the spring and summer, the contaminant load in the water is very high. These organisms require oxygen and a certain range of pH to do their job. Water holds only so much oxygen, depending upon the temperature and circulation in the water. The more oxygen consumed by microorganisms, the less is available for fish and other waterlife.

Fertilizers applied during the fall and winter also break down much more slowly. Landscape contractors apply nitrate forms of fertilizer (ammonium nitrate and calcium nitrate) to enable plants to obtain nitrogen and remain green during cooler times of the year. Consequently, the potential for fertilizer runoff is greater during the winter. Nitrates that reach water bodies encourage the establishment of aquatic weeds and blooms of algae later in the season.

Add it all up and you can see that the water in lakes, ponds, and water features needs help in late winter and spring. Lake health depends upon spring renovation.

Spring Lake Renovation

The goal of spring renovation is to bring the body of water back to equilibrium before high summer temperatures and sunlight favor aquatic weeds and algae. The goal is to reduce organic matter suspended in the water, adjust the pH of water to be favorable to chemical breakdown, and to improve the oxygen content. Other steps can be taken to improve lake health and discourage weeds, such as increasing lake depth, and circulation, using dyes to reduce sunlight penetration, and preventing runoff and debris from reaching the water in the lake.

Reducing organic matter involves filtration or treating the water to cause organic particles to settle to the bottom. Filters are mechanical devices that require pumps, piping, a filter media, and power. The equipment must be operated and maintained properly. The filter media must be flushed or replaced regularly to be effective. The time between filter maintenance events is determined by the load of suspended material in the water and the volume of water passing through the filter.

Treating a lake with chemicals requires sufficient circulation and an accurate calculation of the volume of water in the lake. The product needs to be both effective and safe for fish and irrigation, if the lake is used as a reservoir. It must be applied correctly and evenly distributed throughout the body of water. For these reasons, selecting a professional applicator familiar with treating lakes is extremely important.

Clarification treatment should be followed with other steps to reduce light penetration and increase oxygen circulation. And, of course, now is the time to get serious about preventing debris from trees and lawns from entering the body of water.

The acidity or alkalinity of a lake influences how rapidly organisms function to digest contaminants. These organisms perform best at a certain range of a measurement called pH, which represents the amount of hydrogen present in the water. A balanced pH is 7.0. Tree leaves and rain are acidic. Likewise, a lake with a limestone shoreline can become too alkaline. The lake pH can change over time and reduce the effectiveness of beneficial organisms. The lake can be treated to restore proper pH.

Lake Depth, Weeds, and Oxygen

Depending upon the size and depth of your water feature, some provision should be made to maintain circulation throughout the year. Circulation distributes oxygen through the entire volume of the water, improves decomposition of organic matter, and helps the lake maintain an even temperature at all levels.

A lake should be designed to be deep enough so that sun does not encourage establishment and growth of bottom-rooted weeds. Seed for these aquatic weeds can enter a lake from birds or simply by the wind. Lake dyes can be used to prevent the sun from reaching the lake bottom and to impart a bluer cast to your lake.

Deep lakes can develop layers of water at different temperatures. This is called stratification. The temperature of each layer determines how much oxygen it will hold, with cooler water holding more oxygen. By causing water in the lake to circulate, the layers are mixed and the oxygen level is consistent throughout the entire body of water.

Water that doesn’t circulate will also tend to hold more suspended material. This leads to discoloration and odors. Circulation causes suspended material to fall to the bottom of the lake where bacteria can break it down. Certain treatments can also cause suspended material to drop out.

When the amount of contamination entering a lake is impossible to control, a filtration system might be necessary to help out mother nature. Filters are designed to catch a certain size of material. The right filter media is needed to provide filtration at the most economical cost. Filters are also an additional maintenance concern.

Fountains and Injectors

Floating, motorized pumps can be installed in lakes to either pump air into the water (injector) or to pump the water into the air. While these will provide additional oxygen to a lake, they also increase the temperature of the lake to be more like the air above it. The air pumped into a lake will not be evenly distributed throughout the lake without proper circulation. An injector that uses a pump on the lakeshore can also inject oxygen into the lake through tubes stretched across the lake bottom. All these devices take energy to run and require maintenance to operate properly.

Much goes on under the surface of a water feature. Neglecting lakes during the winter and spring can result in serious problems in the summer. After all, lakes are there for us to enjoy. They add to property values. They are worth investing in maintenance by knowledgeable professionals.

Taking An Offensive Position in Your Lake Management Game

By Patrick Simmsgeiger, Founder of DWI

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Proactive Lake Maintenance

Let’s say you have this great water feature you are quite fond of, it adds pleasing aesthetics to your surroundings and is a peaceful contribution to your environment. However, your water feature- like most items in a landscape- causes  you problems from time to time. When these problems arise, you consult a lake maintenance company to fix the problem. You then continue to leave the water to itself until a problem arises once more. Sound familiar? Although this type of reactive maintenance while solve apparent problems, it will not prevent the time consuming and potentially expensive ones from erupting; the kind of problems which brew beneath the surface, and are usually not visible to anyone besides trained professionals.

Lakes, streams, and ponds are complex ecosystems, which when reproduced by man are usually not self-sufficient. For the best results, they require proactive maintenance: a preventative approach to maintenance that works in conjunction with the existing ecosystem in order to prevent overbearing and costly situations from developing.

Often times, lake maintenance companies with a reactive approach hire personnel who are only trained with a defensive understanding of lake maintenance; they have no training in preventing compounding problems, and providing long-term lake plans and solutions. A company with a proactive approach trains their personnel not only to solve problems but also to be forward thinking and take action to prevent them. Proactive maintenance personnel understand the root of problems and are able to eliminate costly problems that build on themselves over time.

Much like gardeners or landscapers monitor plants in our public areas (shopping plazas, community centers, recreational parks, etc.) proactive lake maintenance professionals monitor the growth of aquatic plants and overall quality in water features. Without this care of aquatic and emerging plant life, like terrestrial plants, they will grow continue growing until they are out of control creating algae blooms, fish death, a need for timely and expensive reactive restoration, and in extreme situations like death.

To avoid expensive reactive restoration, a proactive professional treats problems even when they are not visible on surface level. A situation where this would be the case is when sludge occurring at the base of a water feature creates massive plant overgrowth. A proactive professional will identify this problem, and then makes moves to treat the sludge first and prevent more expensive and time-consuming restoration in response to aquatic plant overgrowth. Further, proactive maintenance professionals remain aware of seasonal changes that may affect the body of water. For example, a proactive lake maintenance professional monitors aquatic plants while they are dormant during winter months in order to prevent unsightly overgrowth situations during the summer.

In addition to implementing measures to maintain the actual body of water, proactive maintenance companies train their employees to understand the workings of all equipment in the underground pump vault (electrical panels, pumps, bloomers, fans and lighting systems) which is responsible for keeping water from becoming stagnated by increasing circulation and aeration. A proactive professional would also take the preventative measures to ensure all wiring and equipment in the pump vault is functioning safely and efficiently. This prevents problems such as motors in the pump vault running hot. Preventative measures allow the customer to be informed of the situation and be given options for repair before irreversible pump damage occurs. This proactive action might cost a mere $400, while replacing an entire pump can cost upward of $7,000!

The more you know about your lake maintenance company the more you will know about your lake – a proactive company will keep you informed about potential issues and provide you with preventative, money-and-time saving solutions. Proactive lake maintenance professionals take preventative measures to ensure that expensive, time consuming and stress causing problems do not become overbearing. Ask questions to make sure the company hired is not simply reactive. Any maintenance company can fix problems, but what you really need is a company that can prevent them.

What Is Involved In Managing A Lake?

By Patrick Simmsgeiger, Founder of DWI

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What is water? Water is made up of two basic elements: hydrogen and oxygen.

Take care of water can be challenging. A common problem is for contaminants, pollution, algae, weeds, and odor to affect the water. When this happens at a man-made lake or pond there is no way for the water to naturally take care of itself.

We use products, experience, and knowledge to combat these problems. The products we use include chlorine, enzymes, chelated copper sulfate penta hydrate, and alum. They help treat algae and sludge. We also use flocculants and colorants to clarify and shade the water. The result is that algae will grow slower and the water will become clearer and bluer in color. Dyes are also helpful to color the water and used properly they are not a threat to fish or humans.

We treat water with an important product called “double chelated copper sulfate penta hydrate.” This product is the most effective product for controlling algae. It slows the growth of algae and enhances the quality of your water. Copper sulfate recently received a bad reputation because it was being misused but when you use a double chelated copper properly, you are using the safest and gentlest of the copper products.

It is important to have a good filter system to keep your water clean. Remember to drain your water feature every 5 years to dispose of the sludge and then refill it with fresh, new water. Finally, you must care for your water on a regular basis; maintenance is required regardless of the amount of use your manmade lake or pond gets.

What should you do if your water is already contaminated?

Once aquatic plants (like algae, weeds, or foam) are present, they are hard to control. There are all kinds of tools but none are solutions by themselves. The best approach is to hire a specialist who will work with you to restore a natural balance to the lake.

Nature is complex and it takes a lot of work to keep things in balance. That’s why aquatic management is important. Water is more complicated than it appears; each individual water feature needs its own customized treatment program.

When looking for help with your water, first determine if the person is licensed by your state. Does he or she have all the required applicator’s licenses and certifications? Second, ask for proof of Worker’s Compensation and General Liability coverage. Finally, ask for and check current and past references. Remember: the time you invest now saves you frustration and extra work later. This is why there are aquatic maintenance specialists. We aren’t just cleaning pools; we are keeping water in a natural balance and making your body of water beautiful.