Couple of Questions

[herzog.drew]

Good afternoon everybody. You’ve all helped me in the past and have been super beneficial, so I’m hoping to use your knowledge again.

I finally started to rebuild my pond as it had many issues; I built the edge completely wrong. After help from everyone here, I finally had a chance to do it today. Here’s a link to my past posts about the pond. Post 1Post 2

Today, I completely pulled out everything in the pond (ignore the streams for now, didn’t touch them once). I dug a shelf near the bottom as well as a smaller shelf, about 2-4 inches from the top. I put a whole new liner in, lined only part of the liner with rocks (they’re expensive and I’m broke), mostly focusing on lining the upper shelf with rocks. I also added a berm all the way around, trying to keep water from getting underneath the liner.

I was thinking that I was doing a good job until when I started putting the water in and I realized a handful of sides were spilling water when other sides were nowhere near the top with water.

I had the gut instinct to put some rocks underneath the liner to raise those parts of the liner up, allowing more water without leaking. My first question is was that what I was supposed to do all along? I initially put all the top layer rocks on top of the edge of the liner; am I actually supposed to bring the liner over the rocks instead?

Secondly, I folded the edges of the liner rather than cutting them, but I realize that just made giant blobs of pond liner inside the pond. You should be able to easily see it in my photos. I meant to take a picture of the before and after without the liners in but totally forgot to, my apologies.

Lastly, was I supposed to cover the berm with rocks or was I supposed to just let the berm be?

One of the photos shows the rock underneath the liner, one shows them over the liner, third photo just kind of shows the whole gist of it all.

Thanks for any help.

 

[JRS]

Hard to judge the level of sides by eye, could have used a string level, clear hose with water or a long board with a level to go around the sides.
I had some similar issues when building a big berm on one side of my pond on a slope. I built up and packed dirt on the low spots under the liner to help level them out, I would not use my precious rocks.

 

[bagsmom]

I would suggest watching some YouTube videos from Aquascape. As I recall, they had a great video from a collaboration at their indoor "sandbox" at Aqua Land. I think April from Atlantis Water Gardens did a little section on edging.
There are also two tutorial series -- one is a small koi pond kit series from Aquascape. Brian, Ed, and Colleen do a step by step how to and I think there's a video about what you need. There is also an older series from The Pond Digger -- How to build a fish pond or goldfish pond -- that's another good one with very clear, step by step instructions. You'll get there! Try to enjoy this part of the process. The frustration now makes the eventual success that much more satisfying!