newbie pond - early next spring...

[Shdwdrgn]

That's a pretty tight area to be working a deep pond in. As mentioned above, make sure and check for buried lines first! A suggestion, if you haven't considered it already, would be to have a plant shelf along the edges facing the sidewalk - then the plants growing there would server as a border, and the shelf would give a safety step if (when) someone does accidentally step off the sidewalk. You also want to make absolutely sure that you go with high-quality liner material here. If you have a major leak, it could damage the house foundation over time.

One more idea that could give you a really cool effect, but would take a bit more work and planning... Where the sidewalk turns towards the house and goes up to the porch, you could remove that portion of sidewalk, dig your pond longer so it extends all the way across the front, then build a bridge over the pond to replace the sidewalk. The bridge would give your fish a nice hiding place, and by making the pond longer, you could make it more narrow and not need to come so close to the sidewalk while still maintaining a large number of gallons capacity.

 

[addy1]

Good idea, bigger pond and a nice bridge!

 

[sissy]

bridge over the pond is a great idea and a guest would love that just make sure you make it wide enough .You could also make the bridge over a stream,See men do have some good ideas once in awhile (just kidding ) LOL

 

[j.w]

Whoa that's a neat idea shwdrgn! Wish I could have done that w/ mine but needed to take the one out cuz of the septic pipes but sure would have been cool! I am imagining what it would have looked like by putting these 2 pix together to give them an idea on how it might look. They actually look like they have more room on the right side where they are planning for the pond then I did so would look much better than mine would have.

 

[sissy]

But yours would look pretty if you put a waterfall on the other side and you could take out a piece of sidewalk put in a bridge and make a nice stream over to your pond JW .It is easy to build a flat bridge all you would need is 4x4's and some wood for the top and railings if you want them

 

[j.w]

Sissy we can't put anything on that other side other than plants growing in soil as the septic pipes are under there..............that's why I removed the pond there. I told hubby about the idea of we could have left that little pond and connected it to the bigger pond and put a bridge over it to the porch and he said don't get any ideas! I told him, well I'm just saying if the pipes weren't there it would have looked nice.............not saying I was going to do it!

 

[sissy]

I thought maybe the pipes were to one side of the area and that you may be able to fit a small water fall close to the side walk .But i guess it must be right in the center and with a water fall they are mostly above ground .That why my pond on the outside closest to the porch could not go to far underground and had to be mostly above ground as the pipe is 3 feet on the other side and the septic tank guys had told me if they had to dig it up for any reason give them at least 3 feet to hand dig the pipe so they would cause no problems for my pond

 

[j.w]

Pipes go right through the middle and have it all re-done now so that project is done and done. Thinking about adding a stream maybe somehow or another to the new pond on the other side tho :lamp5:

 

[Shdwdrgn]

A stream can be pretty shallow, so if you had room to dig a small pond over by the left corner of the house (or even around the side), you could easily dig a shallow trench to lay down a stream between the two ponds. Hopefully your septic pipes are far more than a foot deep in the ground! My fish really seem to love playing in the shallow water of my stream, especially when they're spawning.

 

[shw104]

Hi everyone..

Thanks for all of the great responses…. .I’ll answer the questions that have been asked so far.

I’m sure there are no underground utilities in the area of the pond. I’ve located them all already on my site. This area is clear which helps tremendously.

The idea of a steam under the walk is a great idea, however I think I’m going to have to start smaller with this project. That would be a great addition down the road but budget, time, and my wife will keep this project more on the smaller side (for now… :razz: ).

It looks like the magic depth is roughly 3’ to be able to safely keep the fish outside in the winter. Working backwards, what is the maximum slope the sides can handle to reach this depth or maybe a better way of asking is what is the smallest pond I can do to get the magic 3’ depth? If I go with a more shallow pond (due to size restrictions), when would I need to bring the fish inside?

I saw at my local home depot a 160 gallon, preformed pond that appears to be roughly 24” deep. Do they make deeper ones or is this a good option for smaller ponds?

Thanks for all of the help…
Scott

 

[addy1]

I have straight sides on two sides of my pond, slightly sloped on one side, it goes down to 5 feet deep. My arizona pond is straight sided, down to 5 feet, no problems with cave ins etc. Both places, clay, rocky hard soil, not sandy

 

[Shdwdrgn]

The back side of my pond against the waterfall goes straight down with a very slight angle. My pond is also 3' deep, and the slope only comes in maybe 6 inches at the bottom. My soil does have a lot of clay in it, but also keep in mind that the pressure of the water pushing against the liner will prevent the dirt from shifting much. If your soil is solid enough to hold its shape through a light rain, then you should have no problems.

Based on the idea of losing 6" on all sides, the bottom of your pond would be roughly 1 foot smaller than the top of your pond. You will want to avoid koi (which can get 2-3 feet long) and stick with comet and shubunkin goldfish, and/or other smaller native species. See the thread "What variety of fish can be kept?" for ideas if you want something other than goldfish. Even going with smaller fish, I would still try to go with a pond which has at least 6-8 square feet of bottom surface. So from the top side, you could do a pond that is 3x5 or 4x4 and still have enough water volume for the fish to be comfortable through the Winter.

Of course I suggest you use as much of that area as possible, leaving planting shelves all the way around. Cattails or other tall water plants along the back side will really help give the illusion of a larger area, and having lots of plants will help in the water filtration.

 

[sissy]

They make bigger ones my lowes here sells one that is 250 gallons and 1 that is 350 gallons .But preformed comes in all sizes ,if you google preformed they have them up to 3000 gallons on a couple of sights .My first pond was the preformed 250 gallon one and it was deeper in the middle than 24 inches .

 

[j.w]

I have pretty straight sides on mine too and it's sandy soil. The water does push against the sides and keeps it nicely in place. I have plant shelves around mine about 18" down and they do come in very handy for reaching in and grabbing the pots when dividing plants. Also like putting the little shallow ledge right near the top edge so I can put those rocks in there to hide the liner and then top them off w/ the ones that go around the edge. That way the water can cover some of the bottom rocks and voila no see no liner!

 

[taherrmann4]

Straight sides on 75% of the pond and sloped on the other 25%.