On the 20th November 2010 Eric will be exactly one year young!

Here are a couple of recent Eric installations to replace unsatisfactory existing systems. This first one is in the UK and had been running for some two years.

These existing units were removed after dropping the water level in the pond and emptying the units.

The pond holds only 4,400 gallons (20 tons) but has no bottom drain, instead there was a 4” bore tube through one wall with a downturned elbow taking the tube down to the pond base.

Once the new system had been installed the pond was filled to running level overnight.

This shows the Eric Four unit being discharged for the first time. The space taken up is much less than that required for the other items.

These shots were taken two days after the filter was started up. I must confess the owner’s design is quite breathtaking especially knowing that it was designed initially as a water feature and not a Koi pond.

This next system in southern Spain holds around 8,500 gallons (38 tons), it had also been running unsatisfactorily for two years despite the fact that the owners had to pay for a weekly service contract. Fortunately they saw another Eric system nearby that had been installed earlier this year, when the owners saw how quickly the units could be discharged together with the water conditions and condition of the Koi they contacted me. The existing filtration equipment had to be removed – including one huge water pump with equally huge running costs, after the pond level had been lowered. Fortunately the two bottom drains had been installed perfectly, the drain in the smaller area of the base has been connected to an Eric Three unit whilst the drain in the larger area was connected to an Eric Four unit.

It was then just a simple matter of ‘out with the old – above and in with the new’ below!

The space taken up with these units was around 30% of the space taken up by the earlier units. Once again, the electricity running costs are reduced by around 70% and there’s no need at all for any weekly servicing.

Also interesting was the fact that the Eric units and water pumps cost just slightly over 55% of the price of the units removed!

This shot was taken 2 days after the new system had been running and YES – there IS water in the pond!