Flood and Fire Water Catch Ponds

Catch ponds can be seen along the banks of new motorways up and down the country.

Their purpose is to capture runoff form the vast areas of impervious road surface and to

safely store it letting it seep / soak away slowly to prevent local flooding and river surges.

Fire Ponds are another form of catch pond that is specifically constructed to contain

firewater, the toxic and highly polluting runoff from fires.

Electronics engineers can equate the operation of a catch pond to that of a large capacitor

that rapidly charges up during a storm and then slowly self discharges due to leakage

which is deliberately enhanced by a bleed resistor. Fire Ponds however are usually

designed to be 100% water tight and lined with an impervious liner in order to safely

contain the firewater.

Water from both catch ponds and fire ponds can also be re-circulated during fire fighting

to minimise the total amount of firewater generated.

Catch ponds can also create valuable habitats for wildlife especially invertebrates such as

the rare Great Crested Newt. The in-flow and out flow to a catch pond can be dynamically

altered to prevent total drying out in summer and rapidly altered in the event of a storm

using one of our 2ndgeneration steel FlapstopperTM flap valves.