My daughter and I built our water garden 17 years ago after she had seen Monet's garden on a trip to France. We made a very small replica 6 feet by 16 feet. We had no pump but were able to maintain a balance with plants and some chemicals. We had it redone last year as the liner had developed a leak and this summer after 18 consecutive days of rain the walls collapsed into the water all the way around. What is this from and how do we fix it?
Monet's water garden
- Thread starter pondwoman
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slakker
AKA Mike
Do you have a overflow? How's the drainage around the pond? Could be the water pressure outside the liner is greater hence the collapse.
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You need to make sure the edge of the pond is higher than the surrounding land. You want any water to flow around the pond. With all the rain the water flowed behind the liner filled it up with water which pushed the pond liner in. You might have had a mini river from run off in the yard that found a low spot that started running under your liner.
To fix (are the dirt walls collapsed too) if no walls collapsed, you need to get the water out, either let it go back into the soil or pump out, the berm up the edge of your pond to keep water from flowing under the liner.
If the walls collapsed, the only way to fix, is to drain pull the liner out or forward from the walls, shovel out the dirt, rebuild your wall.
Sorry you are having these issues.
I have the dirt sloping back around our pond to send any serious rains away from the pond. Also dug pits in some places and filled the pits with gravel to collect water, like a french drain.
Like slakker says do you have an overflow, the pond may have over flowed and the water filled up behind the liner. I made our overflow where when it does overflow the water can not flow back and under the liner.
To fix (are the dirt walls collapsed too) if no walls collapsed, you need to get the water out, either let it go back into the soil or pump out, the berm up the edge of your pond to keep water from flowing under the liner.
If the walls collapsed, the only way to fix, is to drain pull the liner out or forward from the walls, shovel out the dirt, rebuild your wall.
Sorry you are having these issues.
I have the dirt sloping back around our pond to send any serious rains away from the pond. Also dug pits in some places and filled the pits with gravel to collect water, like a french drain.
Like slakker says do you have an overflow, the pond may have over flowed and the water filled up behind the liner. I made our overflow where when it does overflow the water can not flow back and under the liner.
Slakker,slakker said:
Thanks for your help. I am going to rebuild and make sure we have proper drainage,
Pondwoman in Ohio
pondwoman said:
Thanks for all your help. I thought we had proper drainage but we will be much more careful as we rebuild this time. Hopefully we can save and reuse the liner, but since some of the side walls caved in the liner may not be large enough anymore.
slakker
AKA Mike
I'm new to ponds myself... for my pond, I used sandbags to build the form as it's not on compacted soil. I speculate this should have the potential added benefit of letting water be pulled away to drain tile routed to daylight... We have 4 months of rain where we live in the winter, so we'll see how well it works this winter! LOL...
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Pondwoman welcome to gpf! I had the same problem when i first built my pond that it was not raised sufficiently on the rim to keep water away. I had what you would call floating liner syndrome in that water would seep under the liner and push it up. I would have to pull the liner away from the edge a little and use a cup to bale water out that fell under the liner. As soon as I rebuilt it and raised the edges it stopped the problem. Also you need to wrap extra liner on the edges under some rocks so water can't seep behind it. Some people also build a french drain so there is not too much water laying next to the pond and of course any water that overflows needs to have a way to get away from the pond area.
