Home Improvement

Hateyou said:

Does freezing over kill them? If it doesn’t freeze too hard I’d think they’d just live through it like normal? There are massive koi at ponds here in Indiana which has hard freezes and they live. It’s a much larger pond though. 300 may just freeze solid, how deep is it?

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It's just 30 inches deep, that's the worry. I'm afraid it would freeze too deep, though it would never freeze solid here.

Edit: I'm afraid if I do nothing the fish will die. Not that big a deal, but my kids raised these from tiny little three inch things in their fish tank, and now they're in the pond for the first year, and they're about 13 inches long. I'd hate for them to die.

Zapatta said:

I don't about where you live but here there are Koi Clubs, like kennel clubs but for fish, they actually have shows and awards etc. I would Google around and see if you have one in your area, they will teach you tons of stuff answer all your questions.

People from Japan fly in for Koi Shows here and are known to drop many grand to buy a Koi that has 'auspicious' markings. It's pretty nuts. How that is decided I don't know.

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Good idea, I'll check it out, thanks! Our fish are pretty cool looking, mostly white, with orange and black spots. I'd be happy for someone to pay me thousands for them.

We had a huge koi pond growing up. Turn the waterfall off and buy the bubbler things so that it doesn't completely freeze over. Depending on the size you'll want more than one.

As long as it doesn't completely freeze over they should survive... we never had any die from what I can remember. I think you live in Indiana? I am outside Chicago so our winters are identical.

First year we had it, it froze over and I remember my mom and dad boiling pots of water and laying them on top of the frozen ice to try and make a hole.

I found a couple pics from way back when... our backyard was the forest so my parents designed it to look like it was coming out of there.

in hindsight I guess it wasn't that huge but it felt like it. The fishing line in the 2nd pic is to deter Heron's from trying to eat our koi.

BrutulTM said:

The trout pond here has a windmill powered aerator that keeps the fish alive through the winter. Most of the time it keeps a hole in the ice but it does freeze over when it's below zero for a couple of days. I assume the bubbles still brings in oxygen even if the hole freezes over. No experience with koi ponds though.

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Yeah, this is a stupid suburban type issue. My general pond is deep enough and big enough that I don't worry about it. This is something the kids wanted to do next to the deck. Now we have to figure it out. Blah.

I have a small one car garage I've converted into a home gym. Being in Florida it gets pretty warm and I'm looking at cooling options since its not tied into the central air. Anyone have experience with portable AC's and if they're effective and reliable for a few years?

Bandwagon said:

What type of "forced air heater" do I need to heat my garage to ~50d on-demand in the winter, and safely? I don't need someone permanent that's going to be on all the time, just looking for something to quickly take the chill off when I want to tinker for a few hours after work. I think it's about 25ft x 50ft x 12ft high. It looks like propane is safe for indoors but kerosene is not, correct? any other options?

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I used to use something like this before I plumbed in permanent heat to the buildings/garage.


It's loud, and you don't want it running constantly, but run it for ten minutes and the place is tasty warm, then work for an hour or two, ad give it another ten minutes. The tube heaters are quick and efficient, portable, and not expensive.

Another option is something like this:


The down side to these is that they are simply radiant, so the heat goes up, now out and it stays colder around your feet. However, I did use these for a while, and I had a metal card table. I put the table over it, and it forced the heat to move sideways instead of up, so it heated the room much better, even around the feet. A cheap piece of ducting metal on saw horses would have the same effect.

But what I ended up doing was making friends with people who worked in HVAC. They'd help me find forced air gas units that had a damaged component, that insurance was replacing for someone. I could get them for next to nothing. Then I'd get another that had a different component that was damaged. I've been able to build up five forced air gas furnaces, three of them with air conditioning included, for under a couple thousand dollars. All I had to do was run the gas line and some simple ducting.

In my woodworking shop I'm looking to replace the forced air with radiant. Forced air blows the dust around too much.

Intrinsic said:

“Safe indoors” seems like it should include a heavy caveat regarding ventilation. Not sure you’d want to burn anything in a closed off room without some sort of exhaust.

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Propane burns pretty clean. If you have an exhaust meter you'll be fine.