My first pond build - in slo-mo

[johnnyi]

Excellent advice about not trimming the liner (which we will not) and putting the grasses in pans which we will.

Here are some pictures of us putting the rocks in. These may not be the final placement, but it's a start.





Notice in the right foreground of the previous picture our original pond in an old kitchen sink.

This is where the pump will be:



Water may be as soon as tomorrow.

 

[sissy]

lol took me awhile to find the old kitchen sick and then saw the shine of water .Gosh i am blind as a bat .i'm sure you are going to be happy as the water goes in .i know it seemed to take forever to fill it was like waiting for paint to dry

 

[addy1]

Looking good there! Keep posting updates

 

[j.w]

Things are progressing and looking good.
How's it going today Johnny? Waiting for the fill up

 

[johnnyi]

I'm filling as we speak! I've decided to fill up as a test for several weeks and kind of decide whether we have everything as level as we think.



I'm timing the fill (don't have a meter but know it takes 135 seconds to fill 10 gallons) and noting various levels of fill to determine the volume to those points.

YES!

John

 

[addy1]

way to go! water time, fantastic

 

[johnnyi]

:razz:

 

[j.w]

Wow you must have about 1/4" in there in that photo.......................getting there slowly but surely

 

[johnnyi]

J.W.,

Yes, probably less than 3 gallons at that point. Now we are over 760 gallons:



It will be interesting to see how much we will get at the nominal water level. I should know in the next hour or 3.

John

 

[johnnyi]

I finally stopped filling after about 4 and a half hours. That means that the main pond has about 1,130 gallons in it and the stock tank has about 125 gallons. The total is about 1,255 gallons. If I were to build up the low points of the surrounding berms I could get maybe another 1 to 2 inches of water which would bring the total in the pond to about 1,250 to 1,300 gallons, but this seems good for now.

I've begun running the waterfall and filter circuit. I found the the wye between the two without any valve favored the bypass to the top of the stream bed and none went to the filter, so I connected the 2" ball valve to the leg that feeds the stream bed and shut it off completely. The 125 gallons filled in about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. That seemed to be too short a "hang time" so I opened the valve to about half and it seems to be working well.

The things yet to do include watching for leaks, obtaining filter media (no rush really until spring) and planning on where to use the rocks we have and how to cement them into place. We will run it all as is for several weeks before deciding.

Interestingly, its supposed to be 24 degrees F tonight making this the coldest night in several years.

John

 

[j.w]

There ya go now ya got water in it and aren't you having fun and sounds like everything so far is going the way it is supposed to! 24F today? You may be ice skating!

 

[johnnyi]

That was this morning and supposed to be overnight tonight (Tuesday night/Wednesday morning). Probably for about 8 hours below 32 degrees F/ 0 degrees C. The pond didn't freeze last night even with those temperatures and there was only a thin coating on the stock tank. I'm thinking of leaving it all on and see what happens.

John

 

[j.w]

It'll prolly be just fine. With all the snow and cold temps we are getting now my pump and falls are still running good.

 

[addy1]

Mine freezes, thaws, freezes, thaws a real yo yo. Still have the pumps off. We are getting slammed with winds right now and temps dropping, cold front moving in.

 

[johnnyi]

I left everything on last night and it all worked. No ice this morning. I guess it wasn't as cold as predicted. No leaks yet.

More pictures to come.

John