A New Pond in the Pocono Mountains

425 gallon raised cedar garden pond

Overview

Well, after the desire to have a garden pond for many years and talking about it for so long, we finally decided to purchase an above ground pond kit, one of which we have been looking at for some time. We figure we would start small, learn and then decide where to go from there. We purchased a 425 gallon above ground pond kit from Coastal Pond Solutions in British Columbia. (http://coastalpondsolutions.com) a.k.a. Kim's Ponds.

The pond kit assembled is 82" x 72" x 30" and consists of:
Red Cedar Frame and 3 benches
Preformed Firestone EPDM Pondgard Liner with ground pad
Quiet One Model 4000 pump with mechanical & biological filtration and ultraviolet sterilization (991 gph)

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Planning and Construction

Began construction April 1st, outlining the area where the pond will sit and started removing the sod. Should be favorable weather conditions a few days this week to work outside, but at 61 y/o, I don't move as fast or last as long as I used to, so I will take my time.

The sod has been removed. (The pinkish lines to the left were other areas of consideration for the pond placement.) That concrete slab you see on the bottom left is the top of an old cistern. This house was built in 1860. At that point in time, many houses used cisterns. In this case, the water was pumped up from a spring about 400 feet away through lead pipes and deposited in the cistern. The cistern had a brick wall through which the water was "filtered". From the cistern were pipes that led into the cellar of the house to a holding area. The water was pumped from this holding area to where it was needed in the house. I would have loved to place the pond right over the cistern, but was concerned about the cistern top being able to hold 3500+ LBS of water.
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When we started removing the dirt, we found an old clay drainage pipe.
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The drainage pipe may have been there for decades. It was filled with dirt.
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Next, we filled and tamped about 5 inches of screenings (stone dust).
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Then, we put down the lower sides of the pond and fitted the stone border.
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We removed the pond frame and leveled the stone border frame
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Filled the border and tamped more stone dust to just below the stone border; then, set up the pond frame
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Put in the liner pad
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Filled it with water, and started the filter
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A few ground level views...
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Dug out 4-5 inches of stone dust and replaced with river rock
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Added some more top soil around the border and re-seeded the grass
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The fisher boy
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The grass is growing nicely and the cattails are doing well.
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Since our pond will be in the Southern sun all day, I decided to build a sun block. This is my progress so far. I will stain it to match the pond and cover it with sun shade cloth.

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On a sunny day in early June
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With the sun canopy finished and in place
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Fish / Plant Stock

I have 8 sarasa comets that started out at about 2-3". A couple of them are about 5 inches after just a couple of months.

I also have a few Anacharis plants, a water lettuce, a water hyacinth and a dwarf cattail.

Videos

Here are a few videos from the company where we purchased our pond.




Pond information

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MoonShadows
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