Numerous devices for removing sediment from ponds, lakes, streams, lagoons, and the like are known in the prior art. These vary from large trucks fitted with huge pumps and vacuums, to garden hose devices purportedly capable of creating suction sufficient to remove silt and debris from the bottom of a pond. Neither of these extremes is sufficient for a residential pond owner or for a pond servicing service where routine and periodic servicing of ponds of 8 feet wide to about 1 acre is involved.
Pond vacuums are popular with many water gardeners because of their convenience and ease of use. Such pond vacuums are primarily designed so that their motors remain out of the water but are positioned near the water's edge and used for cleaning algae blooms, fish waste, dead leaves, and other dirt that may collect at the bottom of the pond. Problems also exist in the use of such devices, including difficulties with respect to access to deeper portions of ponds, vacuum suction loss due to long tubes or pipes from the motor to the debris at the bottom of the pond, efficiencies of pumping action and ability to distribute and/or filter debris after removal from the pond; return of dirty water back to a pond, etc. Even other designs that employ submergible vacuums suffer from various deficiencies, including the absence of any support for a suction device above the bottom of a pond, especially the lack of any supports that have adjustable elevations, are able to maneuver around underwater obstacles (such as submerged potted plants) etc.
Existing gravity-fed bottom drainage systems have a number of disadvantages that make them unsuitable for the average domestic pond keeper. For example, they are extremely expensive, difficult to install into existing ponds, require a large installation area, have inaccessible pipe joints in the pond base and walls, and it is difficult to draw solid waste upwards out of the pond once such solids accumulate and such accumulation decays and pollutes the water quality.
There is therefore a long felt but unsolved need for a relatively simple and effective device, system and method for cleaning the bottom of ponds, especially lined ponds.