About to attempt to rebuild our deck pond myself, with helpers. Intimidated!
- Thread starter Lump
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Here is a photo of the section of deck that I plan to cut away, for placing the skimmer/pump housing. Directly under the spot where my little grandson was sitting. Then I'll make a trap door to cover it.
Here is another photo, which might help me explain where I plan to put my skimmer this time, and where the outlet and/or waterfall will be (hopefully!) next year. The red circle is where I want to put the skimmer today or tomorrow, as work progresses. The blue rectangle is next year's planned location for the beginning of a meandering set of waterfalls. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please!
@addy has a deck pond that waterfalls down her hill - bigger hill, same concept. Check out her build showcase!
sissy
sissy
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do you get lots of stuff blowing into the pond .I just know UI have no skimmer because nothing really blows in and what does blow in a pool net gets it out
OK for my two cents . I would not destroy that pond loaded with muck but I would clean it out place some 2" pvc in it and install some 3/8 stone and make a well aged bog. have a stream or even just a pipe run under your deck and build your pond to the size you'd like. but instead of worrying about flood zones I would build my stream so it dumps right into the lake use an external pump and pull water from the lake pump it up to your new bog and let it drain down to the pond meander down the stream and let it empty into the lake. the video below is a bit extreme but it can give you a few ideas
Interesting ideas, GBBudd. We have already taken the old pond most of the way out, and will start rebuilding/enlarging it tomorrow. But the idea of having the stream pump water up from the lake, and then drain back into the lake is interesting, indeed. One challenge might be that, since our lake is 250 acres, long and quite narrow, and a popular destination for wake-boarders and wake-surfing...we get MASSIVE wakes pounding over our sea wall all day long. So any water feature that ends at waters edge would be pummeled HEAVILY.
Today the new pond liner and the underlayment arrived. So the guys finished hacking out the iris' and other plants, and drained the pond (much to the chagrin of our one remaining gold fish). We thought we were out of big round granite rocks, until we dug out many inches of muck, plant roots, etc. We put the uprooted plants in tubs of water, and are keeping some of the existing gravel moist, so the beneficial bacteria won't all die.
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The original pond contractor installed some plants, including some lilly pads. The lillies were nice and all, but would never get past the colorful budding stage (I read that lilly buds don't like wind, and won't open if there is any wind?). But when we got down into the bottom of the pond, we found massive roots for those lillies!
As you might have noticed from the above photo of the huge lilly root, we were at first uncertain what to do with the old pump, skimmer, and liners. Then we got the idea to make another pond in our front yard. Behind my friend Travis in the above photo, you can see where they took an awkward little patch of grass space between our driveway and a retaining wall, and dug a new pond, where we plan to install our hole-through rock fountains, etc. (As if our other project wasn't ambitious enough!) LOL
That's a great illustration of what happens if you don't contain your lilies in pots! Imagine what a few MORE years could have done! Holy cow!
As LisaK1 stated earlier, WOW, this IS an ambitious project!! I'm already wondering what I've gotten myself into. Following are some photos of progress. 1st shot, pond is drained, revealing that all that gravel, and all those cobble rocks I thought had disappeared over the years were really still here...buried under muck!
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I was surprised to learn that the contractor who installed this little pond about 20 years ago, didn't use a pre-made water fall, but simply piled some bricks up under the liner in a corner area, and dumped water from the pump right on top of it. There was a bag of lava rock beneath it, but of course water would choose the easiest path, which was to simply dump on top, and roll out the front, without ever circulating through that bag of rocks.
One of my workers had to return home last night, to deliver keys to his wife. He mentioned that the creek behind his house was LOADED with awesome rocks...for free. So I drove him down there, and he and my other guy and I loaded a wonder assortment of nice flat rocks which are stuffed with great fossils. These should work great in the waterfall feature I am planning.
