New pond build

[Scottmilr3]

Hi all! Back in 1992 the guy who built my house wanted a pond. Dug a three foot hole, lined it with some gravel he thought would hold water and threw a ton of rock in it. Fast forward, we bought the house 4 years ago and it looked like a small forest with no water. I cut the trees down and in the spring every year and it would hold some water but was dry by the end of summer. A constant battle with the invasive species…..

Finally three weeks ago everything came to start the “rebuild”. The pond is 30 by 30 and about 6-7ft in the middle. I have a waterfall bucket and a skimmer bucket on the other side. 8,000 gallon per hour pump and a dual aerator. The liner is 50*50 45mil Firestone. In a day and a half my buddy his uncle and I removed all the rock with a tractor, excavated the pond, put down underlay, lined the pond and used all the existing rock from the old pond. Im waiting on some more flagstone to arrive which will be stacked up under the spillway on three sides of the bucket. There will be a waterfall, a beach with a shallow entry area, a foot shelf on the other half, eventually a patio by the retaining rock wall. I put sandbags in the beach area with underlay over them to hopefully help hold the beach in place.

I have a lot more stone/pebbles to lay but should only need about 6 hours with the tractor to lay the rest of the heavy rock. I know I should probably have a bog filter for better filtration but this is what I’m starting with. Any advice is always welcome . This is my first pond build.

 

[cas]

Nice progress! What a lot of work. Looking at that picture with the trees, you would have never known that was to be a pond. Keep the pictures coming!

 

[rubyduby]

How exciting! A big pond like that is a dream for many of us that are limited. Can't wait to see continuing pics of the project!

 

[Mmathis]

Hello and welcome! That is awesome! The beach area will be great for wildlife. Be sure to keep us updated!

 

[j.w]

@Scottmilr3
That is going to be a fantastic pond!

 

[GBBUDD]

SOME LARGE BOULDERS AS THE BEACH area falls down into the pond possibly with a sand bag or two in between the boulders to keep the sand from washing through. 8000 gph is a good number for circulation within that sized pond. but i'm not seeing any plumbing thus far? A bog / cistern and waterfalls and or stream is some ideas you should think about. but the looks of it this pond is away from everything so a rain capture / cistern is advisable.

 

[addy1]

Welcome to the forum!

That is going to look wonderful!

 

[Scottmilr3]

SOME LARGE BOULDERS AS THE BEACH area falls down into the pond possibly with a sand bag or two in between the boulders to keep the sand from washing through. 8000 gph is a good number for circulation within that sized pond. but i'm not seeing any plumbing thus far? A bog / cistern and waterfalls and or stream is some ideas you should think about. but the looks of it this pond is away from everything so a rain capture / cistern is advisable.

Thanks!! I have 2” pvc that runs from the skimmer bucket on one side of the pond to the waterfall bucket along the shelf opposite from the beach side. The waterfall bucket will be encased by the flagstone to the top of the spillway.

Wash and holding the sand was definitely a concern of mine. I have one row of sand bags but I will probably reinforce them with 10-16” rock behind them. Half of the beach area that is showing will be under water so we’ll see what happens.

 

[GBBUDD]

careful 2" lines probably the most common but they are limited in how much water they can move. Anything that may be upgraded or is even close to its max volume i'd step up to 3"

 

[Scottmilr3]

careful 2" lines probably the most common but they are limited in how much water they can move. Anything that may be upgraded or is even close to its max volume i'd step up to 3"

Sounds good, the skimmer, waterfall bucket and variable speed pump all have 2” connections so I’ll just stick with that

 

[Scottmilr3]

Got a lot more done today! A lot more fine tuning to do but all the heavy lifting is pretty much done. Rain coming tomorrow we’ll see how much it fills up

 

[Jhn]

Nice looking, pond. Watch your pond edges they look really flat to the surrounding land, you do not want run off during rains getting into the pond. What is the goal of the pond? Swim pond, garden pond to enjoy fish, both.

Without either a bog or aloooot of plants in the pond/ serious man made filtration you are going to be battling green water constantly. You have the large gravel shelf by the road that you can plant a lot of plants in there which will help with the suspended algae issue most run into.

 

[Scottmilr3]

Nice looking, pond. Watch your pond edges they look really flat to the surrounding land, you do not want run off during rains getting into the pond. What is the goal of the pond? Swim pond, garden pond to enjoy fish, both.

Without either a bog or aloooot of plants in the pond/ serious man made filtration you are going to be battling green water constantly. You have the large gravel shelf by the road that you can plant a lot of plants in there which will help with the suspended algae issue most run into.

Thanks! That’s what I was worried about. The pond will be for swimming and for some fish. I’ll make sure to plant out the shelf the best I can. There will be one spot specifically that might get some run off maybe I can figure out how to set up a drain from that spot

 

[poconojoe]

You also don't want rain run-off getting  under the edges of the liner.

 

[Scottmilr3]

You also don't want rain run-off getting  under the edges of the liner.

Yep I’ll for sure be putting a drain tube in the low spot and take it to the woods which is lower than the pond. We just got 9” of rain in a day! Which is nuts and I didn’t have the liner weighed down in some spots. In those spots it’s like a water bed right now. Once things dry out I’ll get the liner covered with sand and the drain put in. Hopefully that will help.