Advice on second pond layout with water bog

[csdude55]

I mentioned before that I'm having land cleared out in my back yard, and then I'll be building it up so that I can put in a second pond that will flow in to my original pond. I need help deciding where to put the water bogs, though.

The pond idea
Here's a rudimentary drawing of the back yard and concept:



The gray in the upper left is the new section that's being cleared out. The dark brown is where I currently have flower gardens and mulch, the green is (spoiler alert!) grass. The lighter brown in the bottom left is my deck, and the white is a paved sidewalk area.

The blue in the dark brown area is my current pond. It's roughly 8' x 10' x 3', but with the angles and everything it's really about 1000G. I intentionally made it odd-shaped hoping to make it look more natural, but I kinda regret that now so I might reshape it once the second pond is functional. If I do, it'll become closer to 1500G.

There's a black line that's hand drawn through the gray area, that then curves back in to the dark brown mulched area. That will be a retaining wall, so that the new pond will be maybe 2' higher than the current pond. I'll also be building a French drain along the foundation of this wall, JUST to make sure that nothing happens to inadvertently pour water towards my house :-O

The blue in the gray section is my planned second pond. The general shape here should be more oval, and I'm relying on plants and rocks to make it look more natural.


The water bog
In the picture, I have two potential placements for a water bog; either the white circle on the left, or the yellow circle on the right. The white circle would get more sun due to a large tree that will be to the right (East) of the yellow section, so I'm leaning towards placing the bog in the white, sunnier section.

Either way, this bog would have a small waterfall back in to the second pond, which you can see would stream / waterfall down in to the original pond. Then I would pump water from the original pond back to the bog.

What do you think so far?

If this is good at this point, the next question is about the pump. I'll have roughly 5000G in the new pond and 1000G in the original, so I'm guessing that I need a pump for 6000G? Which I understand means 3000GPH.

Allowing for about 20' of tubing and a 5-6' head, is the 5200GPH for $329 a good choice?

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Or am I going to regret that and wish I had more pressure?

OR, is sucking 5200GPH out of the 1000G pond way too much pressure for the fish and plants there? If so, should I plumb a smaller pump from the 1000G to the bog, and then a larger one from the 5000G to the bog?

Or even two water bogs, instead of just the one?

I'm in the beginning stages right now, so I'm pretty open to anything! Hopefully they'll finish up clearing out the trees this week, and then we'll be building retaining walls next week. Then there's bringing in several loads of dirt, packing it all down, and digging the hole for the second pond... so I'm at least 2 months away from building the bogs. August or September is really more practical, though.

 

[TheFishGuy]

I like your plan! I think pumping out 5200 gph of the 1000 g pond should not be a problem, just make sure it is in a skimmer box or otherwise protected so the fish stay out of the area.

Your bog seems pretty small for the size of pond you are looking at, so I would advise making it quite a bit larger.

 

[combatwombat]

Same question as @TheFishGuy: What size are you thinking this bog will be? Scale on drawing looks a bit small to be the only filter. I think you can go to either location, will just affect plant choice. I'd probably choose the sunnier location.

RE Pump: Is the 5-6' including your tubing or just your static head (elevation change)? Tubing adds to your total dynamic head. 20' could be a lot of extra head or hardly any depending on size of pipe. Recommend 2" flex pvc.

All said and done, I bet you'll end up around 8-10' of TDH, and the 5200 alpine pump will get you about 3,500 gph at that pressure, so turnover once every 2 hours, which is probably enough.

Like @TheFishGuy said, full flow through 1000 gallon pond will be fine.

 

[csdude55]

I'm not entirely sure what the final dimensions of the second pond will be, but I understand that the bog should be 30% of the total square footage. So if the second one comes out to 14x20x3 and the original 8x10x3, then the bog will be somewhere around 8x12x1.

Would there be a problem to have 2 bogs that are 4x6x1? I thought about it overnight, and I can see value in having a big with shade plants separate from another with full sun plants. And 2 waterfalls coming in to the larger pond would be pretty cool looking!

@combatwombat , I'll know more when it's all actually built, but for now I'm calculating 5-6' of elevation change based on the intake being near the bottom of the original pond (so 2-3' down), then a 2' rise to get to the second pond, then a 1' rise to the top of the water bog.

The second pond will be 7-8' away from the original, and then I have to circle around the 14' diameter. That comes to a max of 28' of tubing :-O The pumps all have a max of 28', though, so I'll have to find a way to shave at least 2' off of that. Which shouldn't be a problem; I can put the intake slightly higher, or move the bog slightly closer to the original pond.

Would I be better off if I step up to the 6550 GPH? I'm guessing that this is one of those where it's better to have too much than not enough... but not TOO much, either?

 

[TheFishGuy]

I'm not entirely sure what the final dimensions of the second pond will be, but I understand that the bog should be 30% of the total square footage. So if the second one comes out to 14x20x3 and the original 8x10x3, then the bog will be somewhere around 8x12x1.

Would there be a problem to have 2 bogs that are 4x6x1? I thought about it overnight, and I can see value in having a big with shade plants separate from another with full sun plants. And 2 waterfalls coming in to the larger pond would be pretty cool looking!

@combatwombat , I'll know more when it's all actually built, but for now I'm calculating 5-6' of elevation change based on the intake being near the bottom of the original pond (so 2-3' down), then a 2' rise to get to the second pond, then a 1' rise to the top of the water bog.

The second pond will be 7-8' away from the original, and then I have to circle around the 14' diameter. That comes to a max of 28' of tubing :-O The pumps all have a max of 28', though, so I'll have to find a way to shave at least 2' off of that. Which shouldn't be a problem; I can put the intake slightly higher, or move the bog slightly closer to the original pond.

Would I be better off if I step up to the 6550 GPH? I'm guessing that this is one of those where it's better to have too much than not enough... but not TOO much, either?

I think if you would like to have two smaller bogs then it would work great! even 6550 gph should not be too much.

 

[csdude55]

I think if you would like to have two smaller bogs then it would work great!

If I do that... would you pipe the 5000G to one bog and the 1000G to the second? Or pipe the 1000G to both with 2 separate intakes and identical pumps?

If I pipe the 1000G to both then I think I'd have to get (2) 4000GPH pumps. It only has a 21' max head pressure, though, so I'd have to mush things just a little. I could probably get away with (2) 3100GPH pumps, but the head pressure of 19' makes that one a little TOO tight.

If I pipe the 5000G to one and the 1000G to the other, though, then I think I could pipe the 1000G with a 4000GPH pump and then the 5000G pond to the second with the 2100GPH pump; the head pressure wouldn't be as big of a deal here, since the bog would only be a few feet away.

 

[Rabungalow]

If it were me I'd go with the yellow section for the bog. It makes more sense for the water to be pulled from that direction to your waterfall as to avoid dead spots in your upper pond. That way you get good flow through the entire system. If you go with the white section then you leave that whole upper section of the pond as a dead spot.

 

[TheFishGuy]

If I do that... would you pipe the 5000G to one bog and the 1000G to the second? Or pipe the 1000G to both with 2 separate intakes and identical pumps?

If I pipe the 1000G to both then I think I'd have to get (2) 4000GPH pumps. It only has a 21' max head pressure, though, so I'd have to mush things just a little. I could probably get away with (2) 3100GPH pumps, but the head pressure of 19' makes that one a little TOO tight.

If I pipe the 5000G to one and the 1000G to the other, though, then I think I could pipe the 1000G with a 4000GPH pump and then the 5000G pond to the second with the 2100GPH pump; the head pressure wouldn't be as big of a deal here, since the bog would only be a few feet away.

I would simply go with one of the 6550, and then do a tee somewhere along the line to split the flow to the two different bogs. I would place the pump in the bottom pond, so that you get a large amount of flow going through each pond keeping them all well filtered.

 

[combatwombat]

Alright, @csdude55! We need to do a little lesson on calculating total dynamic head, or TDH. Things are not nearly as dicey as they appear to you!

First, we need to know what our target flow rate is. You said you'd like to shoot for about 3500 gph. For a pond system w/ 6,000 gal, that's probably fine. More would be better, so let's just shoot for 5,000.

Now, there are two parts to calculating head: static head (elevation gain) and dynamic head (pipe/fittings/etc.).

It looks like you misunderstand both. Pretty normal, I did too when I started learning about pumps.

Static head is the elevation change from water level of the pond you are pumping from to water level of the pond/bog/waterfall/whatever you are pumping to. It doesn't matter how deep the intake is under water. Elevation change between water level is all that matters.

Based on what you said here:

I'm calculating 5-6' of elevation change based on the intake being near the bottom of the original pond (so 2-3' down), then a 2' rise to get to the second pond, then a 1' rise to the top of the water bog.

You actually only have 3' of static head.

Dynamic head is everything else. You said you think you'll have about 30' of pipe. That does not mean you are adding 30' of dynamic head. If you use 2" flex PVC, 30' of pipe will add another 3' of dynamic head at a flow rate of 5,000 gph.

Try to use as few fittings as possible and long-sweep fittings when you must have them, and plan to add another 1-2' of dynamic head to account for those.

You're looking at a TDH of about 8'.

Now, you just look at the performance curves for any given pump, and find one that will flow about 5,000 gph when TDH is 8', and you're good to go.

We can get into all kinds of ways to raise or lower you dynamic head and different pumping strategies, but that's the long and short of it.

 

[GBBUDD]

pictures the descriptions a bit much

 

[csdude55]

Sorry, @GBBUDD ! Right now it's all just planning, so the only pictures I have are fallen trees! LOL

@combatwombat, thanks for all of the info! You're right, I'm struggling with understanding the math of it all. I was calculating the head based on the difference of the depth of the intake to the top of the water bog, plus the distance from the intake to the outlet.

@TheFishGuy, I have a question for you. If I drop the pump in to the pond instead of having it external, how would you hide the hose? My current pond has the hose coming over the top to a filter, which I tried to hide with rocks, but it's not beautiful. I was thinking more along the lines of cutting a hole in the liner (gasp!) and then affixing the hose to it in some way so that the entire hose is buried, but if I have the pump inside of the pond then that would make it a challenge to pull out and clean.


I've already hit my first snag, though :-( I'm still doing the second pond, but the retaining wall and building up the whole gray area in the drawing is becoming cost prohibitive.

8" tall cinder blocks are $2 /each, and 6" tall retaining wall blocks are $4 /each. Mortared cinder blocks would block drainage, though, so it's really not a good option.

By my count, I'll need in the neighborhood of 1,080 cinder blocks OR 1,440 retaining wall blocks. That's either $2,160 for cinder blocks or $5,760 for retaining wall blocks :-O Plus the cost of hauling in gravel and dirt, labor for packing and leveling, then decorative rocks... I'm looking at spending at LEAST $5,000, closer to $8,600 if I do it right.

That's just not gonna happen.

I looked at railroad ties for the back and side (the straight lines) hoping to save money, but it's only slightly cheaper than retaining wall blocks. At $29 for a 7" x 8' tie, I'd only save about $250.

So now I'm backing off towards just hauling in enough dirt to sort of make a hill where I want the second pond, then slope it down the natural decline. I'd cover the whole thing in chipped / shredded limbs for mulch, which I hope to prevent erosion. And, of course, a larger French drain in the front than I'd originally intended, since I'll DEFINITELY have runoff to the front.

It's not the dream, but it's what I can afford :-/

 

[GBBUDD]

My topo originally was a slope away from the house after excavating and building the back is 6 feet higher than it was.

Prices are just stupid. Someone has to pay for the ridiculous checks 4 years ago my bog cost me 3300 today it's over 6.000

Just noticed today Arizona ice tea still has 99 cents for their 24 oz cans. Thank God everyone's not on the bandwagon.

 

[csdude55]

I think that my new plan is:

Step 1: Have my guy dig a rectangular 8x8x3 hole in the top left corner of the drawing with his tractor, to act as a temporary home for my fish and plants;

Step 2: Lay a cheap liner in it;

Step 3: Pump water from the original pond to it, then move over the fish, plants, and current pump.

Step 4: Build up the bottom right corner of the gray section of the drawing, just an area about 12x12x2;

Step 5: Dig a new 1000-1500G pond in this new area, similar to the original but shaped better;

Step 6: Rebuild the original pond to go around the gardens, creating an oddly shaped 3000-5000G pond;

Step 7: Build the water bog;

Step 8: Pray to Poseidon and pull some sort of beautiful waterfall structure out of my butt, since I have no idea how to actually construct one that would look good;

Step 9: Let this run for a few days, then pump about half of the water from the temporary pond to the new construct to add bacteria, etc. Let this run for a few more days, then bring over a few fish and plants at a time until they're all moved over;

Step 10: Drain the temporary pond, throw away the temporary liner, and fill in the hole.

With this plan, the only actual expenses will be the labor for hauling the truck load of dirt, digging the new pond, hauling the rocks, and of course the liners, pea gravel, pumps, and piping. I think that I could keep it under $2,000, total.

Thoughts?

As a point of reference, here is my current 1000G pond (pic taken last year):



I'll be moving that fence about 30' back so that the new pond and everything will still be safely enclosed.

 

[TheFishGuy]

To complicated, can’t comprehend. As far as hiding the pump hose goes, your water level usually isn’t all the way up to ground level, so you can dig a small trench right up to the liner and lay the exes liner in the trench. Don’t know. If that made any sense.

 

[GBBUDD]

I think that I could keep it under $2,000, total.

you usually get what you pay for . liner, pump, rock, gravel. excavate expense under 2 k , not in ct you wouldn't