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When I started my pond building business in 1989, you either had a pond pump or you didn’t, and you bought your pump at the plumbing supply house and made it work somehow. Usually it was swimming-pool blue, so you had to camouflage it somehow. It was hard covering up that bright blue. Or you used a swimming pool pump outside the pond with the accompanying sand filter and you hid the whole thing in a shed or behind a wall. Swimming-pool installers installed the pump and ran the lines, and it cost a bundle. You also had the choice of a sump pump that you folks with basements may already know about. They were put in a sump in the basement and kicked on when water leaked into the basement. My parents still have one.

It wasn’t long before pump-making companies figured out that a whole new industry was coming into existence and started making specialty pumps just for ponds. The pump was submersible, black, had a long cord and you threw it in the water, plugged it in and it worked. Little Giant made a great pump and still does. So did Cal pump, Oase and Pondmaster, and they still do.

Hundreds of pond pumps are on the market today and offer the pondkeeper choices for every type of pond and every pocketbook. As with any tool, in order to figure out the pump you need, you must know what you want to do with it.

What about indoor pumps?
Pumps are measured in capacity and head. Capacity is expressed in gallons per hour, or GPH, and head is how far up the water can be pumped before the pump can push it no higher.