Bogging in New Jersey

[bobchapman]

I'm a newbie to ponding and bogging, but have been reading a lot here and on Koiphen, so feel that I have at least some handle on what to do. However, I'm interested in whatever comments people want to make about what I'm attempting here. I've learned a lot from reading Addy1's posts, and the comments of others. Now I'm digging! And the no-winter Winter has so far been fantastic for making progress, though perhaps not so great for some plants and for the climate in general. We are having days of 60 and 70 degrees in December 2015, which is the warmest that we have had in the nearly-40 years that we have lived in this town and this house.


I'm building on a slightly-sloped portion of our backyard: it drops about 5 feet in 80 feet. The bog will be at the top of that slope, and the pond at the bottom. A pump-pit will be adjacent to the pond, and send the water back to the bog. Both bog and pond will be concrete foundation, plus two rows of concrete block, and an EPDM liner. The bog will have below-gravel piping to distribute the water in an upflow manner. The pond has a bottom drain and two tangential pond returns to keep the water moving along towards the bottom drain (it's what some call a river-flow design), and the stream from the bog enters the pond at the end opposite the bottom drain.


There is also space allocated for a rain garden, which will be where the excess water goes when we have any significant rainfall. The town here requires that ponds be less than 24” deep, or that we fence the area, which we aren’t about to do for appearance reasons. Therefore, any water coming into the pond has to have an exit, which will be via an overflow pipe to the rain garden. That will also take care of the excess water that comes into the pond as the stream is shut down.


Progress so far:

- bog and pond foundations are in and I got those done at the same time as I had a concrete crew in here concreting the second half of our basement floor. Saved me from mixing a whole lot of bags of concrete.

- Concrete blocks are in place with rebar and the cells are all filled with concrete. So they are done to the point of putting cap stones or rocks on top. That was still 70 sixty-pound bags of concrete mix. I bought a cheapo Harbor Freight concrete mixer which sounds as though each bag mixed will be its last, but it keeps chugging along.

- Both bog and pond are dug out to the depth that I need, with maybe a little tuning yet to happen.

Next step: dig out the pump pit, and construct the floor, sump pit, concrete block walls, rebar, fill cells in block. Maybe the warm weather will permit some more of this to happen yet this Winter.

Now: how do I post pictures to this forum? everything that I try to post comes back with an error message that the file is too large.

Bob

 

[MitchM]

Your project sound interesting, Bob.

What are you doing for trying to post pictures?
From taking the picture, getting it onto your computer to trying to attach the picture to your post on the forum, what are you doing?

 

[bobchapman]

Your project sound interesting, Bob.

What are you doing for trying to post pictures?
From taking the picture, getting it onto your computer to trying to attach the picture to your post on the forum, what are you doing?

I tried to drag-and-drop a jpeg from my desktop computer, but even as small as I could compress it (1.3 MB), the system still said it was too big. Is it better to host pictures somewhere else and have a link? and what's a good host to use?

 

[MitchM]

I stopped using outside hosting services because I was able to drag and drop pretty much anything my iPhone or point and shoot camera would take.
That's strange .

I just dragged and dropped a 3.7MB picture, below, with no issue.

Maybe the owner of the site,Becky can shed some light on what is happening.
Becky, are you there?

 

[addy1]

I have not tried drag and drop, usually select upload a file then select the picture.

 

[bobchapman]

I have not tried drag and drop, usually select upload a file then select the picture.

That doesn't work either: same error message. The pic is 12.3 MB, which isn't all that big these days! I'd like to be able to post them, but don't know what other options there may be. Photoshop won;t compress it any farther.

 

[bobchapman]

That doesn't work either: same error message. The pic is 12.3 MB, which isn't all that big these days! I'd like to be able to post them, but don't know what other options there may be. Photoshop won;t compress it any farther.

Ah ha, had to cut the pic down to very small image! First picture is the overall area that I'm working with. Garage is on the right, house is off-picture to the left. Land slopes down from Bog to Pond, and Pump will return water to the Bog.

Next is the pond, showing the two layers of concrete block; the gap is where the skimmer will go.

Here's the blocks with rebar. The vertical rebars are drilled-and-epoxied into the concrete footing, That's not too hard to do, because the concrete was fairly new, so not really hard, and the epoxy comes in a tube
like caulk -- with a good strong grip you can force the stuff out and into the drilled holes. It does take a bit of work to clean the holes thoroughly so that the epoxy will grab the concrete and not just the drilling dust.
First the air hose which send clouds of dust into the air and wafting towards my neighbors, then an old toothbrush scrubbing inside the hole, then another blast of compressed air. The epoxy!

and then the cells in the block are filled with concrete. Rodded each cell with a piece of old closet pole to make sure that the concrete was pretty well consolidated in the cells. Eventually, there will be
either boulders or bluestone on top of the concrete.

That's all the pix for today. Started today on digging the pump pit: approximately 6' x 7' x 4' deep. Lots of dirt to remove by hand and spread around the outside of the pond to raise the ground level.

Bob

 

[addy1]

Nice work!

 

[Mucky_Waters]

Are you digging the pond a little deeper Bob? How about a bottom drain?

 

[bobchapman]

Are you digging the pond a little deeper Bob? How about a bottom drain?

No deeper: the township has a 24" rule: deeper than that, and I would have to fence the whole pond or the whole yard. Very un-attractive, IMHO. This pond is for goldfish and frogs, but not koi.
Yes, there will be a 3" bottom drain. It will feed the Tangential pond returns (2 of those). The skimmer will feed the bog and stream. So, there will be two separate pumps for those two circuits.

 

[bobchapman]

Nice work!

Thanks, expert <grin>.
Bob

 

[Mucky_Waters]

No deeper: the township has a 24" rule: deeper than that, and I would have to fence the whole pond or the whole yard. Very un-attractive, IMHO. This pond is for goldfish and frogs, but not koi.
Yes, there will be a 3" bottom drain. It will feed the Tangential pond returns (2 of those). The skimmer will feed the bog and stream. So, there will be two separate pumps for those two circuits.

Sounds good so far, what will the 3" bottom drain feed to?

 

[bobchapman]

Sounds good so far, what will the 3" bottom drain feed to?

There will be two water circuits:
- Bottom drain to pump to tangential pond returns. This circuit I figure I can run the longest into the Winter period, and maybe the whole winter.
- Skimmer to pump to bog to stream to pond. This circuit I figure to shut down in the coldest weather so that the stream doesn't cool the water too much (less surface area, less water motion, etc.)
All filtering will be done by the bog.
I'm making the pump pit large enough that I should be able to add filtering if it proves to be needed. However, Addy1 and other contributors here assure me that it won't be required. But, I'm a careful sort of guy who likes to have options when nature shows it's necessary! And there's no easier time to make the pit bigger.
Bob

 

[bobchapman]

Here's progress over the past couple of days.

The interior of the pump pit (inside dimensions of the block walls) will be 72" x 80", and will be 48" deep.
I've chosen to put the pit in the ramp area that goes from the back yard up towards the garage, as that will tend to make the pump house look a lot smaller because more of it will be buried. But, of course, that means more digging.
Yesterday, I discovered an interesting feature of the property. When we built the garage some years ago, there was some rubbish from the old garage that had to be disposed of, including the concrete entry apron to the old garage. The builders buried it. Guess where they buried it: yup, give that man a cigar! I need to go down 56" to allow 48" interior height after the 6" concrete floor goes in. Right at the 48" depth, I discovered the old buried concrete slabs.
Fortunately, I had purchased a Harbor-Freight-equivalent electric jackhammer for some other work, and with a little persuasion, it broke up the slabs small enough that I could muscle them out of the pit (not so easy to do).
Anyway, the deepest part of the pit is now at 56". I just need to keep shovelling! The wooden stakes show the full size of the excavation.
Bob

 

[addy1]

Nice looking hole! My bog is big, around 1/4+ the size of my pond.
Full of plants, I feel that is one reason it works so well.
The small ponds in the loop are also full of plants. All add to the filtration.