Building a 10,000-13,000gallon pond

[portabuddy]

thanks awk, Im all amped up to finish it too...


I had a bit of a setback... a big one realy... my filter got filled over winter, all of the walls but the front one caved in and filled the hole almost totaly up. all there is left is about a foot of the pipes, and that sucks, its the firsat good weekend in a long time so tomarow i might just go digg the hole out, and mayve make it a bit bigger...





not only that but it turnes out that the police fire department paid me a visit too, at 8:00am. and left at around 10:00, I slept through the whole thing, about 8 cops showed up and blocked off the road, and two fire trucks tore onto the culdasac....






and they did this...

they cut a huge hole in my fence. ok well its not my fence its the cities and they can do whatever they want with it. but stil... litle do they know that they are so helping me out, now i dont have to carry the clay down the hill to clear the hole, i just todd it out onto the tracks.


A hobo made himself a hut out of old ties that cn rail is currently swapping out and it sparked up catching the alcohol on fire catching the hut on fire and getting my fence cut.



and here is a pic of what it look like after winter. I thinking of putting the boat in the pond when its done...



see you all tomarow.


Oh, also let me clarify...

the black line defines the edge, im going to fill a concreet ring around the pond to keep the clay atbay, un-nessisary yes but i like to over do it, it will be about 8-10" thick and it will be extending the waterline up by about a 12-14", this makes it bigger better and will also keep the critters away too., the gray line and up will be about 2.5-3feet., light grat to the dark will be another foot it gently slopes, im going to have sant here where the light gray is, the red will be a total of 5 feet below the waterline. and its about 2-4 feet wide.,

the green boxes are footings for the curved bridge, serves three functions, one to provide shade for fishies. two, allows acces to the lounge area on the other side. and three, you can sit on it and let the koi nibble on your toes...

the whit box is the filter intake, its a skimmer box stile that takes in the siurface water and heep leaves from water logging and screwing things up... although as you can see i dont have any trees that have leaves around me for this reason. and then the whie lines show the pipes.

 

[nativelover]

lookin good!

you could put ur boat in there...good place to put it for trailer maintenence...:lol:

when you think you'll be done? end of June? sooner?

 

[portabuddy]

thanks nativelover, the boat and trailer are bolth 55 years old but bolth are in exelent shape. My dad bought it for like $200... im planning time off around July so im thinking then, there is still a cr@p-load of work to do, but the problem is also that the garage has to get built first... that should only take about two-three weeks, its going to be a 30'X50"X9'(or 10' tall ) flat top cinder block monstrosity, its going to be covered with stucko like the pillers, in time the house may be too. that said without the garage done i cant fill the pond, or the 1300gallon filter. there will be nothing to mount the pumps to since they are external and if i build a little hut for them it will just get in the way of the garage, and poaring the concreet.


Sadly we didnt get as much done as i hoped, i got up bright and early at noon(i work nights, this is like 5:00am to me) showered ate, woke up my bro. and after a pow-wow of what to do by 1-1:30 we got to work. I gug the hole again and my bro manned the 5 gallon pail. I dug and slung the mud and muck into the bucket and he carried it through the hole... Man i love that hole, couldnt have come at a better time... by 4:00pm i made a foot and a half progress, and noticed that the hole didnt just cave in the hill slid down after the winter, in one of the pics you can see a dip by the fance where it slid in..., so you guys will se how i handle that...


By 7:00 the sun was setting and homedepot was closing, My brother and i rushed over and bought 15 bags of concreet, 6 bags of 1/2" crushed graval and about 15 rods of rebar... I got in my civic and my brother in hid HB and lugged it home( homedopot is only about 800meters from my house )
Here is a pic of my car after we took out about 5 bags. And a pic of my bro carrying the rods to the top of the hill...



Progress as per 7:00


And a pic of the bridge of clay we are building on the other side just beking the hole in the wall...




I dug about another 1-2 feet lower when we stopped at about 9:00, so after about 8 houres of constant digging we are going out for some dinner... I'll proble be calling in sick tomarow to finish this thing, digg digg carry dump. digg digg carry dum...


This thing is going to be so reinforced its not even funny...



Does anyone know where i can get 20 million pot scrubbers?

 

[nativelover]

Does anyone know where i can get 20 million pot scrubbers?

janitorial surplus store

cant wait to see this thing done!...i didnt realize how big that hole is, is that a shovel in it in the last pic (of the hole)...

 

[portabuddy]

yes it is, I'm 6'3" and the shovel reaches my chin... and yes I'm going to find out who makes the scrubbers contact them and if they wont give them to me i will take em ...

i still have another 2 or so feet to dig down, then i will mix up the cement and gravel lay the re-bar, stick it in the ground and pour a 4" pad down, then the cinder-block courses, with the bottom three courses being filled where the rods do through them, like in the huge fishtanks, the back wall will be slightly curved to resist the external forces. all in all without the blocks its costed me less then i thought, the supplies today only ran me 140. thats with a trawl too. so I'll see if the brick stacking runs through my vines, I'm not Italian but Polish is close enough.

 

[PinkPanther]

Wow! Awesome work! I will be adding this to my subscriptions!

 

[portabuddy]

cool... well this weekend its not goint to be raining and its not goint to suck so i will be doing some work., I had a guy that does ponds to help with the waterfall as i wasnt sure how to finish it and we spitballed some ideas, and figured that we need more if a foundation for the bottom of the waterfall, and i went out and chose some rocks, the serface area is 9X20 so i need 4 tonns of 4"wide edge stone. at $220 a ton, i dont think i'll be buying koi this year , but its nice to find someone with a bit of experiance that isnt stupid and dosnt think that hes smarter then everyone else on the planet.

On a side note, i will be making the majority of the scrubbers and filling the rest rith badded ravarock. the material at a fabric store is $1 for a 2"X1" and thats per meter. so i'll wait for them to have a 3-4-1 sale like they do every year, borrow my moms membership card and be rollin...

I went with a stacked flat stone look with the most of the stuff 2-3" tall and some pieces that are a bit bigger...

 

[portabuddy]

ok its sat. 9:30... time to get to work, update will be end of sunday...

 

[purebullet417]

wow thats a nice pond

 

[portabuddy]

wow thats a nice pond

lol thanks, you mean hole in the ground right?...



OK as promised, its sunday, and its comming to an end...

Saterday i got finished digging out the hole and squared it off at 60"wide, I decided to use 10:cinderblocks and they are 16" long so th hat to be 58" wide to accomodate 2 full blocks and one half block. the hole tapers a bit to the top but thats going to get back filled in. i ran across 2 hoge rocls that my brother had to help me take out, this is because the hole was twice as small last year., I decided to make the hole 4'squared(ish), with blocks and foam and liner it will be about 3'X3'X(4.5'-5') tall



The handome guy in the hole is yours truly, dont i look happy to be done?, ti only took two weekends and it was slow going digging slower still since it eas moved one clumpy lumpy stickey heavy bucket at a time. Then I layed the verticals, three feey tall driven down 6", then i used 10 other pieces of rebar to fourn the lattice base, i dont have a pic because i was in the hole and it was dard and we where all tired, ANNNYYYHOOO... the rebar was all layed we had some BBQ and decided to pour the concreet the next day...



A general over view of the yard and such.



we decided to go with a red ceder mulch on this side of the yard...


I think it was a good decition.



This is a shor about 2houres after the concreet was layed... you cant seee the rebar but ... trust me its there...lots of it... the verticals are for the cinder blocks the blocks will be filled in around the rebar. We ended up using 6 bags of 3/4 gravel and a whopping 13bags of concreet, the foundation is 4-5"thick and somewhat level... Well more or less...





A huge amount of work and more still to come, i still need 60cinder blocks

thats next weekend, and luclely enough its not raining till thursday and only for one day... thats perfect.

Oh and im not lobster red too....