20000GPH Stream Project Hungary

[Gabriel_D.]

Hi everyone,
Thanks for making this great forum and all the practical infos you guys post here.

I have a swim pond with fishes built in 2009 in Hungary, EPDM liner, 20m x 16m, 2m deep (65 ft x 52 ft, 7 ft deep), approx. 200 squaremeters. I want to enhance it with a wetland filter and a stream for better water quality, circulation, oxygenation, more fish habitats. The pond is nice and beautiful but it wasn't really taken care of the last years, and we really want to use its full potential and get the best out of it!
The idea is to mimic nature the best way possible: fast flowing water upstream, slow & deep water downstream, for various fish species habitats. The "Delta" of the stream into the pond should be deep enough for the fish to swim up into the stream.

To keep it short, basically I have two questions:
1-Can you build a Wetland filter with the waterlevel BELOW the pond waterlevel?
2-Can you seal the old EPDM Liner from the existing pond to connect it to the stream and the intake bay?

The 2 pumps together move 20000GPH (approx. 90000LPH), the idea is to have the most efficient placement of the pumps in the whole water circuit - keeping the pipe as short as possible and the height difference or slope as low as possible (how much the water needs to be pushed uphill).

The water circuit would be:
(...) from the pond's intake bay (0 cm/ 0 inch waterlevel, Reference)
-> to wetland filter via underground pipe, waterlevel below pond (approx. -5cm / -2inch)
-> to pump vault at the end of the wetland filter
-> pumping water uphill to stream (+150cm / 5ft.)
-> stream flows into pond, pushing water to the intake bay through a negative edge (...)

After all the research, I have to admit: the most inspiring pond for me remains @GBBUDD (it just looks so natural!)

Thank you very much for any kind of comments/answers!
Gabriel

 

[Gabriel_D.]

On the satelite image you see kind of an oval shape that stretches out behind the pond and the stone patio (in a teardrop shape) - it's a "small hill" formed by the excavations of the pond in 2009. its highest point is approx 1.5m (4.9ft), located in the middle right in the front, the left and right slopes downwards are gentle.

 

[Gabriel_D.]

These 2 plans show:
- the birds-eye-view plan
- the side view plan (the height or level of the water of each element in the water circuit.) Note that this is circular in real life, so the right part of the plan is the same as the left part

 

[Mmathis]

Hello and welcome!

 

[Gabriel_D.]

Hello and welcome!

Thanks

 

[Gabriel_D.]

These 3 drawings show the pond design which is incorporated into a permaculture design (but thats another topic for another forum More refined details like stumps or whatever can be drawn more easily by hand, it gives a more precise idea of a project than a simple computer plan!

-the third plan (drawing1) is a more refined one, even though the main principle stays the same. it shows 4 chinampas in each bottom corner of the "small hill". Chinampas are water retention systems for self-watering gardening from south-America (again, not the topic here, but super interesting). These can be connected to the uphill source & stream via pipe and act as waterstorage during heavy rains, since the chinampas' waterlevel is below the stream waterlevel.
A possible ecologically functioning alternative for underground water storages seen on aquascape?!

 

[Gabriel_D.]

some pictures to better illustrate the situation:

The liner is a bit old, but it looks OK in the closeup. @GBBUDD said at one point - I think?- that even old EPDM liner can still be sealed / jointed, if its cleaned correctly beforehand of course. In my case I need 4 joints:
3 for the stream delta into the pond (this needs to be 50cm - 1m deep for fishes to swim upstream).
1 for the intake bay (depth I don't know yet, maybe like 50cm deep. Better too deep than too shallow... afterwards an adjustment with gravels/stones is always possible.

The Stream delta is located on the opposite side of the intake bay in my design, so that most of the pond water gets renewed.

 

[JRS]

Welcome to the forum. My compliments on one of the best diagrammed plans I have seen.

Is there a plan for an automatic fill/top off for the pond? Usually the lowest portion of the water feature, which serves as a sump, will show all the results of evaporation. Not an issue if it is the largest but perhaps if it the smallest as in your plan. The water level in the upper portion, in order to overflow, needs to remain constant.

 

[j.w]

@Gabriel_D.

 

[GBBUDD]

Thanks for the praise.

To answer your questions @Gabriel_D. Yes the wetland can be lower than the surface of the pond. It can even be made at the bottom of the pond.
This link is to a similar project done by aquascapes a few years back.

Second question yes you can seam epdm new to old providing it's still in good shape and you can adiquately clean it.

I'm not a huge fan of standard intake bays. They realy have to be built just so Imo. And that is having the opening much like a skimmer but to wear there fish can swim over a shallow point into the intake. If the opening is too wide or too deep it will have little pull across the pond. The sooner debris is pulled to a filter the soo er it can be removed from the pond.
Meet this criteria and the intake can be invaluable.. My intake sucks all the leaves into the intake. Making it easy to scoop them out in one dense tight area. Though my intake is 17 feet long x 8 feet wide and it's widest

 

[addy1]

Welcome to the forum!

What a great detailed write up. Now need to read a few more times.

 

[GBBUDD]

Thanks for the praise.

To answer your questions @Gabriel_D. Yes the wetland can be lower than the surface of the pond. It can even be made at the bottom of the pond.
This link is to a similar project done by aquascapes a few years back.

Second question yes you can seam epdm new to old providing it's still in good shape and you can adiquately clean it. There is a diy sticky on the construction forum on the site.
Push comes to shove you can always seem the seams you just made to insure if one should ever fail you have a back up.

I'm not a huge fan of standard intake bays. They realy have to be built just so Imo. And that is having the opening much like a skimmer but to wear there fish can swim over a shallow point into the intake. If the opening is too wide or too deep it will have little pull across the pond. The sooner debris is pulled to a filter the soo er it can be removed from the pond.
Meet this criteria and the intake can be invaluable.. My intake sucks all the leaves into the intake. Making it easy to scoop them out in one dense tight area. Though my intake is 17 feet long x 8 feet wide and it's widest. Works great at pulling in all my leaves in the fall

in the links below my posts is a showcase with lessons learned and my build

 

[Gabriel_D.]

View attachment 165670@Gabriel_D.

Thank you!

 

[Gabriel_D.]

Welcome to the forum. My compliments on one of the best diagrammed plans I have seen.

Is there a plan for an automatic fill/top off for the pond? Usually the lowest portion of the water feature, which serves as a sump, will show all the results of evaporation. Not an issue if it is the largest but perhaps if it the smallest as in your plan. The water level in the upper portion, in order to overflow, needs to remain constant.

Dear @JRS,
thank you for the compliment! I really appreciate that people take some of their time to read my posts and to respond!

You're right, that is a crucial aspect! For now, the Pond always was filled with garden/tapwater when needed (which is cheap around here). In my case, the lowest waterlevel of the water feature is the wetland filter (with its pump vault). The hot summer sun hitting the gravel in the wetland filter may lead to evaporation loss.

but:
If the wetland filter is very deep (like 1.5m or 2m, 5ft or 6.5ft), will it have the following uses? :

water storage
to have a constant waterlevel in the circuit? (instead of building an extra underground cistern)

water cooler
to limit evaporation losses? (keep the water in the circuit 1 or 2degrees cooler)

As you said, in order for the pond to overflow into the intake bay and into the wetland, the waterlevel should be somehow constant. If the intake bay is lets say 50cm (20inch) deep, then the pond's waterlevel should never sink below this 50cm mark. If the water sinks lower than that, the water doesn't flow into the wetland anymore (via pipe 2 in my plans) and the pumps may run dry... not good!

If the intake bay is 1m (3ft) deep, am I on the safe side?
Should I build an extra underground waterstorage to compensate waterlevel fluctations?

Here a picture for visual representation.

 

[Gabriel_D.]

Thanks for the praise.

To answer your questions @Gabriel_D. Yes the wetland can be lower than the surface of the pond. It can even be made at the bottom of the pond.
This link is to a similar project done by aquascapes a few years back.

Second question yes you can seam epdm new to old providing it's still in good shape and you can adiquately clean it. There is a diy sticky on the construction forum on the site.
Push comes to shove you can always seem the seams you just made to insure if one should ever fail you have a back up.

I'm not a huge fan of standard intake bays. They realy have to be built just so Imo. And that is having the opening much like a skimmer but to wear there fish can swim over a shallow point into the intake. If the opening is too wide or too deep it will have little pull across the pond. The sooner debris is pulled to a filter the soo er it can be removed from the pond.
Meet this criteria and the intake can be invaluable.. My intake sucks all the leaves into the intake. Making it easy to scoop them out in one dense tight area. Though my intake is 17 feet long x 8 feet wide and it's widest. Works great at pulling in all my leaves in the fall

in the links below my posts is a showcase with lessons learned and my build

You're welcome @GBBUDD !

Thank you for your answer. I am more than happy to hear that wetland filters can be built above or below the ponds waterlevel and that old liner can be sealed. Otherwise I would have to re-think my whole design...which was quite some work haha.

I watched the video you sent about Dr. Pol's pond, its very interesting. From what I understood, the wetland filter they dug was above the pond waterlevel (or in that case, the lake haha), since it overflowed via the waterfalls back into the lake. But maybe I missed out on something?

Your thread on "seaming EPDM Liner" is a real treasure, thank you for detailing your efforts. I did not seam any liner yet. I'll try to document the progress in my thread as I go along the way, if people are curious about it.

Great that you dialed-in your intake bay nicely! How deep is it?