How To Build A Pond - the right way

[AgentOrange]

In the heat of SUMMER, I have pissed off a few, and others just drifted. Posts are down except for me. I really enjoy this forum, hope it picks up again.

To that end, have been wanting to post how I would build a garden pond. No one gives a crap about that, but it will be fun for me. Since traffic is down, I can sneak it in. This will be a long thread and will be fun - for me. Any comments or questions will be appreciated. Water-critter keeping has been a long time hobby of mine.


I think 99% of advice given on ponds is wrong. Some idiot posts something, it is repeated a thousand times by lazy people and becomes fact. That is how the internet works.

All pond installations are different. Some are Lake Hartwell and some are a pot with a plant. It is kinda like choosing a plant for your yard, many considerations must be taken into account if you want success.

I put in my first outdoor pond around 1995 --> 5 gallons. I was hooked. I scraped out a hole, lined it with concrete and made a water fall with plastic saucers. I was a happy/proud guy. It had a lot of flaws or as I call them - "teaching moments".

I knew nothing about outside, but had been an above average aquarium guy for many years. I mostly have that hobby nailed down. I have had one of more aquariums since 1970. I have one now. My first attempts go back to the 50's when I caught crayfish or bought gold fish for a dime. Outdoor critter keeping uses the exact same science.

I put in a 125 gallon pond that went well.



Before I moved South, I put in ponds to move my critters to. It consisted of three 220 gallon ponds from Home Depot linked together. It was great and I could not believe how happy me and my critters were.


I build a box, hauled in dirt to fill it and located the top pond there. There is a spillway on the right that drops water into the second pond, then it flows to the third. From the third it goes under ground to a 55 gallon trash barrel I dug into the ground and put a pump into. The water is pumped to the top pond and gravity takes over.
It worked great. I just had a canoe then and used it to haul those rocks over from an island (lots of work). This is a later photo after I had some plants and Ivy growing.

Soon, I wanted more. I had learned a lot. This thread will be about me building a 4000 gallon pond and how I went about it. You can learn from my mistakes and get ideas as to how to go about building your project.

[elgrau]

Oh, I thought you meant a REAL farm pond. I've helped build (or watched them being built) a few in Ohio. Takes a dozer and a judicial location choice.... Gravity and rainfall does the rest. Great for fishing and ice skating fun in the winter! Also it's best to add a drain pipe and barrel at the lowest point (with pipe run to a point down a hillside that's lower than the pond bottom). This is great if the pond ever get's overrun with a fish species that you don't like: just drain and start over!

[trav0810]

You have your own little slice of Paradise there AO!

[TNRabbit R.I.P.]

I've read your account from your yardcrap blog before; I'll be interested to hear the latest updates to your pond adventure!

[AgentOrange]

Part 1

Back in early 2005, I was on the deck drunk and decided I needed to build a bigger pond for my critters. Like with most projects, sat on the deck for months using cold beer to help me devise a plan. I am a slow thinker. I like to have every angle covered before I do anything as I am lazy. At the time I had three 220 gallon pond tubs linked together, but they could not swim back and forth. It was all good, but I wanted more water for my critters. I had/have seen many expert videos on how to dig in a pond on TV and the web. Most of the advice there did not fit me, and some I knew to be wrong. Most experts are not experts.

I was not an expert at pond digging, but pretty much knew what I wanted and what was necessary. Back here in the woods we have Coons, Herons and etc that can eat your pond critters. To that end, I decided to go against the experts and their "shelf" banks and go straight down for at least 3 foot. That stops all wading by critters who are not me.

I wanted bigger, but one man a good Beagle can only do so much.
Rubber pond liner comes in grades and sizes. Good quality is not what you see at Home Depot. I opted for the best quality I could find as you don't want to have to redo this too often. Liner only comes so wide, so that limits options unless you can seal seams. I did not want to get into that fool's game. I found some rubber liner in Alphretta, Ga that was 20 foot wide. That meant if my pond was going to have depth around 45 inches, it could be ten foot wide. So, I decided on 10X15 foot, about 4000 gallons.

Here is my original blueprint.



That may make a pro like Ed shutter, but I had a plan.
I knew digging it would be hard, so decided to wait and start in cooler weather on the first day of Nov.

[AgentOrange]

Part 2

As July wore on, I got impatient:). By August 1st, I was working. That is not a good thing as temps hit 100 here in Summer and humidity is high.

I made my first mistake then.
A lazy man with a shovel digging into hard red clay is a not a good thing. Learn from my mistake, rent a back hoe.



I went out every morning before it got too hot with my pick/shovel and slowly got a hole carved in. That took a few weeks but was good exercise and cheaper than a gym. Swing that pick and shovel out what falls is hard work. Two things I hate are are painting and digging. This was "extreme" digging, and slow going. As you can see in the photo, there is an incline so I took the dirt and built up the rear. The dirt had to go somewhere.



I worried about a couple things as I dug. Water is very heavy, over 33,000 pounds in this case. I did not want it blowing out my sides. Rain erosion on the sides could also cause a big problem some day. I even fantasized a chipmunk digging in and biting my rubber wall.

To that end, decided to line the hole with 2" boards. To do that I sunk 4X4s every 18 inches 2 foot down into the clay. That is hard, slow work. I poured a few tons of concrete on the sides. Every time I went to town I came home with a load of Sakrete in my tiny truck with bumper dragging the road. I did not mix it, left that to ground moisture. By the time I loaded all those bags, unloaded and dumped them, my arms were starting to look like Popeye's. At the very rear of the pond, stacked them like sand bags.
Bottom line is the pond ain't moving.

[elgrau]

AO wrote: "Most experts are not experts"

That's true if they are simply "arm chair" experts (and that's the most common kind..). Doing is the great teacher and you learn things about whatever you're trying to do that you would not figure out in 1000 years of just thinking about it (anyone who does "projects" that he's never done before knows this truth). This is why Western man will never figure out how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. You only figure that out if someone tells you that you MUST do it (or die, or starve, or be whipped, or simply be denied access to your deity's heaven) and here's how many men you have to do it with. Then in the process of trial and error and "necessity being the mother of invention", you find a way.