How To Plumb

[PeteG]

Hi All!

New to the forum and had a question about plumbing. The first pic is our existing little pond and the second are one just like it, with a stand in for the pond I'm thinking about buying. It is 7'x5' with a waterfall lip that would go into the smaller, oval-ish one. If like to do plants and goldfish in both, but am unsure how to circulate the water between the two or how big a pump I would need to do it. Obviously, I'm in the beginning of the planning for this and haven't even begun digging yet! Any suggestions would be welcome!

 

[Mmathis]

Hello and welcome! I am terrible with advice, so will let others answer this, but my recommendation is to go with a flexible liner (HPDM).

 

[j.w]

@PeteG
I agree w/ @Mmathis
A strong flexible liner, either epdm or hdpe depending on your conditions would be best. EPDM#45 is what we usually go for w/our ponds but there are stronger ones w/higher #'s. hdpe I think goes up to 60mil. in thickness. There are other kinds also. Others will chime in w/more advice.

 

[brokensword]

Hi All!

New to the forum and had a question about plumbing. The first pic is our existing little pond and the second are one just like it, with a stand in for the pond I'm thinking about buying. It is 7'x5' with a waterfall lip that would go into the smaller, oval-ish one. If like to do plants and goldfish in both, but am unsure how to circulate the water between the two or how big a pump I would need to do it. Obviously, I'm in the beginning of the planning for this and haven't even begun digging yet! Any suggestions would be welcome!View attachment 143198
View attachment 143197

okay, if i'm understanding correctly, you want to push water/circulate from one preform to the next, and I'm assuming there's some bit of soil that will be between them? IF you haven't, I'd nix the second buy of preform and do it all with liner. But if you're committed to this road, I'd use flex pvc attached to a pump in one pond. Now the trick is getting it back to the other without either overflowing. ONE way, that is not without possible issue, is to have siphon hoses/tubes that head back to the other. This means pond one should be a bit lower than the pump pond. You'd have to add enough tubes such that they can handle the backflow. The key here is to establish a siphon on the tubes. Might not be as easy as it seems but it'll work. Too, you should have some sort of cutoff on the pump in case the water level becomes unbalanced for whatever reason.

You could also have two pumps and two hoses, each feeding the other but you'll still have to balance and provide cutoffs in case something happens to either pond. Two small ponds are going to have issues a lot quicker than two large ones.

If you want, you can also have one pond higher and adjacent to the other, thereby creating more or less a bog situation where one feeds the other via waterfall. This is the way I'd do it.

In all reality it would be a lot easier to just use liner, create two holes and a channel between, then line the whole thing and be done with it. This channel can even become a stream with rapids/falls.

 

[poconojoe]

HDPE was mentioned. I want to suggest it be HDRPE. The "R" is for reinforced. It has reinforcement strands and is better than plain HDPE.
Or you can use the more common EPDM.