Well crap!

[Jagsfan]

The landscapers finally started on my yard today. First order of business was digging the pond. They got about 3 inches down before running into incredible amounts of rock. Its shale and there's a lot of it. Well they were supposed to go 3 feet down, but by the end of the day they were at 2 feet. Since the rock is shale, it has slivered off in places and the pond is a few inches larger than it was supposed to be on all sides. You wouldnt think that would be a big deal, but the pond is fitting into a tight space and now I have very little room with retaining walls and concrete deck on 3 sides of the pond. Im considering telling them to not try to dig any deeper and doing a partially raised pond with landscape timbers making up the last foot above ground. I think that should be pretty easy to do and i have enough rocks that i can cover the timbers once finished and it still look somewhat natural. Does anybody here have experience building this type of pond or have any advice?

 

[Jagsfan]

Also, my thought would be to put a 2x10 down first with 2 layers of 4x4 on top and that should create a 6" shelf inside. Anybody see any issues with that idea?

 

[Lisak1]

I have no personal experience with building a raised pond, but there are a few folks here who have done it. Try searching the forum for relevant threads. Let me do a bit of searching too and see what I can find for you.

 

[Lisak1]

Here's one example:

garden pond out of sleepers

hi i have been trying to make a wildlife pond for our garden , first i tried to have a inground pond but soon found out i could not dig down more than 10 inch due to compressed chalk , so our pond is in ground and raised up with sleepers and is 6 foot x 5 foot x 30 inch deep now at the moment my...

www.gardenpondforum.com

 

[GBBUDD]

The problem with doing a 2x10 laying on the ground and a 4x4 sitting on it and the 6 inches hanging out theres a very good chance the 2x10 will split due to the moisture and pressure. not because it can't handle the weigh but because it's just a bit thin. Doubling it up can solve that problem. also if you look at the end grain you can see the grain is a semi circle you want to have those layers with one semi circle facing up the other facing down so they work against each other making it very strong.

4x4 for a small raised pond works but for a deeper and larger pond 6x6 is a far better choice.