Felt safety

[mort]

Hi all, I have just built a new extension to my pond (basically because my other waterfall is draining the pond somehow and I won't get to fix it till the winter with all the vegatation around it). It uses the dead area of my garden shaded by the shed for most of the day but makes getting to the filters much easier and I'll add in the other water falls and connecting ponds next year.
The shed has a felt roof which is 3 years old I think, might be older but I can't remember. I had to move a water butt to get the pond in so my question is would it be safe now to just divert the water off the roof and into the pond? I'm not sure if it would be leaching much, it's stopped shedding the gritty cover and the ponds volume is several thousand litres.

Any advice great fully received.

 

[sparkyweasel]

Before you moved the water butt, was it full of pond life? If so the water must be OK. i've got a shed with a felt roof, feeding into a water butt, daphnia and cyclops live in the butt, so I feel safe using it in my tanks, no problems so far.

 

[mort]

TBH i'm not sure. The butt had a pretty good lid and I wasn't the one that emptied it. I'd put money on midge larva being happy in there. I'm considering building a nearby bog garden and diverting the outflow onto it instead. It all depends what bits I can find lying around.

 

[martin-green]

It not a Yes or No answer, since the run off would need analysing.
Its your choice.
I would err on the side of caution and NOT do it.

 

[mort]

Looking into this i found a couple of papers examining the runoff and it's leachates, it seems they leach very little to begin with and nothing you'd worry overly about. So several years later it should be safe. I'm however just going to divert it to the water butt after a little thinking as it's not when we get the rain that the pond will need topping up.

Many thanks guys.