My new goldfish pond build

[cas]

I think that's actually more common than what @CometKeith has.

Well that makes me feel better. I thought my builder cut corners!

 

[Mmathis]

@CometKeith I'm enjoying your narratives and can't wait to see more progression. And knowing these next days are going to be hectic and fast for you, I hate to request more pics.....but if time and circumstances allow, please try to snap some as you go. Best wishes for an uncomplicated completion!

 

[CometKeith]

It rained 3 inches last night! I thought oh no, won't be able to lay the liner, re-roof the garage and drywall my garage. Well half of it got done. By 8:30 am it had stopped raining. I got my roofers to lay new 3/4 in plywood on the decking, and I installed the liner in the afternoon. The liner fit perfectly. It took me and my

two roofers 15 minutes to unroll it and put it in place. It took 3.5 hours to fill it. Here are some pictures. Tomorrow I'll bring over some fish but i'm not sure how many. Also can't decide if I want to bring my new pump and filter yet. I don't want the bb to die that has built up in the filter if there isn't enough ammonia yet to support it. You can see the tear off from the roof that is next to the pond. Hopefully it will all go in the dumpster Monday. I think I'm pretty happy with the shape. It does look like the bean shape I was hoping for.

 

[Tula]

Looks great, pretty exciting

 

[addy1]

Good job! fast moving job!

 

[j.w]

Love watching you do all of this and plus you are doing all that other work to your new house at the same time.Can you bring some buckets of water from your old pond to throw in?
You are super-pond-man

 

[CometKeith]

Haha, Thanks for the comments. I think it helps that I do construction full time for a living. I have been managing lately about a dozen or more simultaneous projects and have working for me a whole slew of carpenters, plus a couple roofers, and an electrician, not to mention a whole bunch of subs I rely on to help me with all my jobs.

In the last 10 days we had to tear down the porch of the building, finish all the masonry work on the back of the building, demo all the concrete in the yard, rehab the garage so we can use it for storage, not to mention all the other activity going on inside the property including hours spent on the stair configuration because they weren't working as the architect designed it. It has been a little crazy this week with the pond because I actually ordered the liner Sunday night before I settled on the design or size and took a guess about what size I would need. We met with an architect friend Tuesday night to see if he liked my bean design, and also paid a landscape architect for 30 minutes of her time on Wednesday to help us place it. She let us know thirds is a good way to go is 1/3rd pond, 1/3rd hardscape, and 1/3rd soft landscape so that helped my wife and I settle on the size of the pond.

Also we have been packing up a house that we have lived in for 18 years with 3 now grown children. During the past week everyday someone shows up at our house to buy something we put on Craig's list including a 9 ft pool table we sold to someone from northern Wisconsin and a cherry desk set that two guys from Bloomington Illinois bought. My lead carpenter thinks I'm nuts for building a pond because we need room to store joists on site because we are building up a floor on the current property, but i'm pretty confident everything will work out fine. He offered to give me a hundred dollars to buy new fish to skip building the pond!

We also rented an apartment in the last week to move to because our building won't be ready for us to move into for at least 4 months. It seems like I have spent a good part of each day at our own project the last few days and next week after we move I'll need to spend a lot of time on work.

Already I feel a lot more relaxed because I know my fish won't be homeless. I'm leaning to bringing over as many fish as possible tomorrow along with the new pump and filter I have running at my existing pond. The other choice is to bring some fish and the filter and the rest on Monday. Still deciding... Again none of these are my first choice but we have to be out by Tuesday.

 

[Mmathis]

Whew!

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks JW. As fate would have it because it rained 3 inches last night there is the perfect amount of water in my old pond to take some out along with my fish and still have plenty of water in it so maybe I will be caring buckets of water to my new pond which is about 6 miles away! Oh, I did celebrate a big birthday this week too so that makes me old now I think. Well at least all this moving, construction, and pond stuff has kept me preoccupied so maybe that's a good thing!

 

[Mmathis]

Well, Happy Birthday, to you, @CometKeith!

 

[CometKeith]

Thanks Mmathis. My wife and I are still planning a birthday trip, but it will be next month instead now because things were just too busy. Two of our daughters live out of state and would have come in, but they thought we would be gone this week. Instead we spent an evening with one daughter and her husband, and our nephew who is a baseball player at George Washington who was visiting Chicago. He has a 92 mph fastball and is hoping to go pro.

 

[cas]

Happy birthday! I would love to see before and after pictures of the house and garage projects. (Maybe another thread?)

 

[j.w]

@CometKeith
I agree w/ @Mmathis

 

[CometKeith]

JW, Thank you. Okay. i think I'm officially exhausted. I had to drain my pond to catch my fish. It took me an hour to catch 4 small fish before I decided to drain it. I think there are still about 1/2 dozen left but I'm leaving them for the next owner. It was a huge job to try to drain it. I put some of the water in plastic containers and just pumped the rest mostly out. I caught maybe around 40 fish but didn't keep count. I put them in the new pond along with a bunch of plants. It was way too much work to do in one day not to mention still packing up the house for several hours before and after working on the pond. My wife keeps telling me I should have left the fish for the new owners and their 9 year old son but you get attached to your fish and I would hate to leave them behind. When I put the new fish in the pond a lot of them didn't do much. Probably changing environments was a big shock. Also there is no algae on the sides and the pond is not cycled even though I brought my recently cycled filter. I'm doing the opposite of what I know is the proper way of doing things. My old pond didn't look so great at the end of the day. I'm hoping it will come back a little my the time the new owners move in... and the new pond obviously doesn't look great either. I dropped my filter when I was moving it so when I turned it on a bunch of black residue came out and made the water really murky. Hopefully it clears up by tomorrow and the fish are fine too.

 

[j.w]

Yep I'm hoping too that your fish are gonna be fine and the water will clear up eventually I'm sure
The kid will be happy w/the fish that you left for him.