Draining the Pond – 01.13.10
January 13, 2010 | Category: Kayaking, News, Photography
The US National Whitewater Center has been draining the water in order to do general maintenence on the pumps, clean up some of the algae and inspect the concrete in the channels. As of today, at about 5PM there is a foot of water in the bottom pond.
We first drained the water from the channels and spread the remaining water in the upper pond out as much as we can in order to facilitate evaporation. Once most of the water was gone, we began sweeping and removing the algae and mud that was on the bottom pond.
The almost completely clean upper pond.
The next step was to put a large 6 inch Diesel pump in the lower pond to pump out the water that our drain can’t remove. We estimate this pump to remove about 400 GPM (Gallons Per Minute).
Big pump in the lower pond.
Next, while the bottom pond is draining, the water that pooled up in the channels needed to be removed. The issue here is most of that water is frozen with about 2 inches of ice. Worse yet, it stays in the shade nearly all day. We were able to break up a lot of the ice and get the pump intake hoses under it. The ice broke and melted slowly, but there is still a lot.
Justin breaking and shoveling ice.
The goal is to remove the small ponds of water in the channels and keep pushing the water downstream.
Josh pumping out a pool on the instructional channel.
In just a few days we’ll be able to drive into the lower pond and hopefully start cleaning it soon. We still have a lot of work to do on the Wilderness Channel side and have not started on the Competition Channel yet. We are making rapid progress though!
We have a running pool on how many Ballards will be pulled out once the water is drained. How many do you think? My vote is 8. What else do you think we’ll find?
Tags: cleaning, draining, US National Whitewater Center
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John W.
on February 16th, 2010did you say “Making Rapid Progress?” Rapid… hahahahahahhaha!!! Rapid!!!!