My Memorial Day Weekend - building a new Pond

[06VT365]

So after 6 years with a 400 gallon preformed pond, My wife decided she wanted to dig our own pond and make it bigger.......or shall I say, she wanted to watch me dig our pond and make it bigger!:snoopfacepalm:

So here are a few pic of last weekends project!

Rough layout of pond....we ended up changing it as we dug it though.
http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u479/Martzie1026/Snapbucket/D1668317-orig.jpg

After much digging...not really. I ended up using a buddies mini excavator!:rockit:

http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u479/Martzie1026/Snapbucket/9801A13A-orig.jpg


Liner in and filled up

http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u479/Martzie1026/Snapbucket/3ACB920B-orig.jpg

2100lbs of flagstone for edges

http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u479/Martzie1026/Snapbucket/B43C21B5-orig.jpg

This is how far we got by monday evening....looks the same today! Just gotta finish rock around the edges, and a few other finishing touches.

http://i1069.photobucket.com/albums/u479/Martzie1026/Snapbucket/DF74C4A2-orig.jpg

[schroederMP]

Thats really good work man...nice work!

Almost big enough to swim in lol

[06VT365]

Yeah! Its 18' x 11' at its widest parts. 30" deep. Figure its about 22-2400 gallons.

Thanks! If I had a bigger area I wouldve tappered the sides more so I could just lay rock in it and let them come up and out to totally hid the liner...but oh well, maybe next time once I get an acreage! The 50x150 city lot doesn't leave much room!

[Midnight Smoker]

Wow, looks good man :cheers:

[Bdons-SD]

Looks good man, you plannin on doing a pump and fall/fountain?

What we do out here is a system called filtrific, what it is is an external I ground reservoir with a bio filter and a pump that routes the water up to your fall. It's really popular out here.

[06VT365]

I went with a pondmaster pressurized bio filter that is external but not fully underground. Then I have a 1800gph pump that feeds it, and it returns to a small water fall.

Thought about doing a bottom drain filter setup but decided its too much work every fall to winterize the underground plumbing.

[Bdons-SD]

Yeah, we don't have to worry about that out here ha ha, our fall return lines are usually a foot deep and our freeze depth is like 8 in, but in my travels inhave never seen it freeze that deep here.

[06VT365]

That would be nice! Our frost line here is 42". although I doubt it gets that deep.

[Bdons-SD]

Dayum....

[06VT365]

Actually I think freeze line is 30" frost is 36", but we dig to 42" to be below the frost. One local pond guy said they go 30" then wrap lines with heat tape and insulation. I didnt want to go through that much work!

[Roush PSD Interceptor]

Looks great.
Swimming critters go in next?

[06VT365]

Thanks Roush!
Yeah, we have 4 koi from our little pond, going to get a few more this weekend. Probably put them in tomorrow. Gunna try to steal a fe 33x12w 12" koi from my in-laws pond too!!!

[Roush PSD Interceptor]

In our small 100 gallon pond I put a dozen 27 cent goldfish.
They lived thru 5 winters grew huge like koi and I asked my neighbor to
feed 1/2 teaspoon of koi pellets every other day
while we went on vacation.

I came home after 10 days and half a large container of pellets was gone.
There was a huge amount of pellets floating in the water
and the next day 5 of the fish died.

Appears he forgot to feed them and then over fed them
the day before we came back.

Similar thing happened with my garden.
Asked them to water it, came home and everything was dead
but the soil was soaking wet.