When you begin construction of your pond or water garden remember bigger is better as far as pond building is concerned. I have never heard anyone say they made their pond to big, Keep Digging. Make sure you have a decent depth, at least 48" I would say if you are planning to keep Koi. The soil from the hole can also be placed around the outside edge bringing the pond above grade to limit ground water contamination of the pond. Use a liner calculator or the manual liner calculation from the liner calculator page to establish the size of liner you will need when building your pond.
When I was building my own pond by the time I had my pond full of water I already wished I had kept digging longer. When you are designing your pond, bear in mind that you are not the only one that enjoys goldfish and Koi. You will have the interest of racoons, snakes and blue Herons among other predators. The best deterent for herons and racoons is steep side walls and a deep pond. I have heard (and believe) that herons are reluctant to land where there are obsticles that will possibly interfere with flapping their wings. This information will only be helpful if you plan to fence your pond though, as herons can land elsewhere and walk to the pond. I have also heard that tight strands of fishing line can be placed around the edges of ponds to prevent the herons from walking in. There are motion detecting sprinklers available as well but I have not heard how well they work. Racooons can fish and they can swin but they can't effectively do both at the same time. Racoons need a shallower area to stand in, in order to be effective fishermen. Make sure that when you finish the top of your pond you get the top edge level, otherwise when completed you end up with liner showing one end of the pond and not the other. This is quite noticable when it is at the top of a body of water which will always be dead level.
It is a good plan when you are building your pond in the first place to bury an armored power cable from a ground fault interupter breaker (GFI) to your pond or Water Garden, for use running pumps etc. even if you do not plan to have a waterfall or fountain right away. In time you may change your mind after your concrete, decking or landscaping is complete and digging in a cable then, will be much more dificult and costly than earlier when you are first building your pond. Adding the power source at a later date may leave a more visible scar in many cases.
When you are choosing a submersible pond pump or an External pond pump (for construction of a larger pond) make sure you get a pump that is rated for continuous duty and get a pump which is capable of turning over the full volume of the pond at least once an hour whenever possible. I have my pump flowing into the bottom of an 80 gallon upper "pond" which is a combination waterfall and Home made filter system. You will see that almost everything I have done on my own pond is an example of how to build a pond on a very small budget but for those with a budget there are a multitude of highly efficient types of pond equipment available. In my homemade filter system the water is pumped through a pre filter of lava rock (simply a milk crate with the pump inside filled up around it with lava rock) submerged in the pond then pumps into a 6" deep settling chamber at the bottom of the pond filter. At this level I have the water flowing in from the submersible pump and I also have a bulkhead fitting with a 1 1/2" drain valve for back flushing the filter when the time comes for cleaning. Above the settling chamber is a 6" deep layer of lava rock which has a lot of surface area for bacteria growth and makes an excellent but inexpensive medium for beneficial bacteria to breed on. (The depth of the lava rock was arbitrarilly determined by the depth of the filter pond I had built) Above the lava rock I have watercress growing. In other areas water hyacynth may work well but we are too cold here. The root system of the watercress makes a great mechanical filter in addition to mechanical filtration the plants use nutrients etc. which would otherwise pollute the pond water. The cleaned water then flows over the top as a waterfall. |
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For anyone who has an actual budget for their pond system there are a large number of highly effective pond filter systems available, Biological Filter Systems or Submersible Filter Systems the submersable filter systems are for the most part for building smaller ponds and water gardens.
How to build your own Homemade Pond Skimmer - diagram and detailsIn the design I have come up with this year (2005) I ended up with an office style black waste basket with a skimmer intake cut in one end at the top, about 3-4 inches wide and an inch or so down below the surface level of the water. I then drilled a hole in the bottom of the container where I mounted a 500 GPH (Gallon per hour) magnetic submersable pump with the power cord and the water outlet going through the bottom of the wastebasket. The area above the pump is covered by a washable furnace filter in place to keep large solids from getting into the pump intake. The top stage is a strainer basket which can be removed and dumped when it gets debris in it. From the pump I placed an outlet hose designed for a sump pump which discharges into my homemade trickle tower (As you can see in the photo above the trickle tower is a milk crate wrapped in black landscape fabric filled with quilt batting and lava rock placed above water for better air flow to aid the bacteria in their work.) The sides of the waste basket are then covered by pieces of extruded polystyrene 1" thick to achieve lots of flotation. This would automatically float too high so the whole issue is mounted below a simulated dock which which is attached to the ponds edge by a hinge assembly and the weight of the dock acts as a counterbalance to the flotation causing the dock to rise and fall as required by the water level and always maintain its same position relative to the water.
Pond plants are expensive and plants purchased from local department store chains may not all be hardy enough to survive in your local area. When I was building my pond I collected a ton of plants from local lakes and ponds where I know they have the ability to withstand local weather extremes. There is a large selection of readily available pond building components in most rural areas, if you take the time to go exploring.
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