Another newbie seeking construction advice

[Lisak1]

Yes - the patio pond build was the one I intended so you could see how a bog is built in easy terms. Now imagine that you have a "box" (really a hole lined with EPDM) at the back of your waterfall. The water gets pushed up through layers of gravel through the bottom of the bog and the output is your waterfall - does that make sense? Imagine a bio filter, but the bog is the "box" portion. How big you make it and how it's actually constructed depends on your space - the bigger the better, but even a small bog is easier to maintain than a bio filter.

If you want to use a skimmer on the pond, point D makes the most sense because it will function best there. But that does mean you will have two pumps - one at D in the skimmer and one at C in a pump vault. Not unheard of, and in fact many recommend building in two pumps just for redundancy.

Putting it at C, where I believe you intend to have a negative edge and underground water storage with water passing over gravel, just doesn't compute with me. A skimmer functions by pulling water in through the opening - how deep is that pooling water going to be at C? Are you burying the skimmer in the gravel?

Sorry - I'm not great with design concepts, but your drawing helps immensely!

 

[poconojoe]

I too would suggest you filter with a bog. I added a bog this past spring and it was absolutely the best thing I ever did for my pond (and me). No cleaning of any filter pads. Just sit back and enjoy crystal clear water.
After over a decade of inadequate homemade and expensive store bought filters (including UV lights), I finally have clear water. Previously I struggled with solid green water, even with two pressure filters and a UV light.
One of the beauties of a bog is that they can be any size. They are proportional to your size pond. The best thing is zero maintenance.

How hard would it be for you to make the pond a little deeper? Maybe a foot deeper, giving you 3 feet. Easy to do that now then later.

 

[poconojoe]

Oh, concerning your liner...don't be tempted (like I was) into using a cheaper PVC liner. It will fail in a matter of a few months.
The #1 liner of choice is 45 mil. EPDM with the matching underlayment. The second choice is HDRPE.
The liner is the very basic component of your pond and you don't want to cheap out on that. Imagine having to rip out and replace the liner after your pond is all setup. Not good. I can tell you that from experience. I was a novice and made that mistake not knowing any better.

 

[stavo]

I too would suggest you filter with a bog. I added a bog this past spring and it was absolutely the best thing I ever did for my pond (and me). No cleaning of any filter pads. Just sit back and enjoy crystal clear water.
After over a decade of inadequate homemade and expensive store bought filters (including UV lights), I finally have clear water. Previously I struggled with solid green water, even with two pressure filters and a UV light.
One of the beauties of a bog is that they can be any size. They are proportional to your size pond. The best thing is zero maintenance.

How hard would it be for you to make the pond a little deeper? Maybe a foot deeper, giving you 3 feet. Easy to do that now then later.

I read your bog post... thanks for taking the time to add that to this site. It's helpful and if you don't mind, I'll probably pepper you with some questions once I get started on mine.

For me, I just need to figure out how to fit it all in now. The irony is that I had the black fence that is visible in my photos put in last year, and I could've easily placed it further out which would've given more space, but the pond idea came after, so now I'm working in a defined space while everything on the other side of the fence is wasted space (unless I want to accept the expense of moving a brand new fence). Having said that, I do plan to enlarge the berm and add a wetland filter on top. Part B of that problem is that the one 8-ft fence panel behind and to the immediate left of my berm was intentionally bolted in for ease of removal for access. All the rest of the panels are welded. So when I get my rock delivery, they'll be dropped behind that panel and I was going to bring them in from there. Otherwise, I have a fairly long route to carry them through the nearest gate. So if I enlarge the berm, it will block access to that fence panel. Not sure how to work around that yet - maybe I need to buy and move rocks in before I build the berm, but at the same time, dirt is being excavated now and it would be best to add it to the berm pile as it comes out.

To answer your question, making the pond 3 feet doesn't involve anything more than more digging and moving dirt. But why? Can't smaller non-koi fish do fine in 2 - 2 1/2 ft? Please let me know, if it's important, I will go deeper.

Concerning the liner, thanks for the advice. I'm not going to spare expense on that. Once this pond is finished, I don't want something major like liner failure to occur.

 

[poconojoe]

Koi are fine in 2 - 2-1/2 feet of water. I was just thinking about the winter when 10"-12" may become ice...that is depending on the climate where you are located. When it comes to koi, they can grow very big and pretty fast too. So the deeper, the better.
You might want to look at shubunkins. They are beautiful fish with long flowing fins. They don't get anywhere near the size of some koi. They don't need as much room as koi.

 

[stavo]

Yes - the patio pond build was the one I intended so you could see how a bog is built in easy terms. Now imagine that you have a "box" (really a hole lined with EPDM) at the back of your waterfall. The water gets pushed up through layers of gravel through the bottom of the bog and the output is your waterfall - does that make sense? Imagine a bio filter, but the bog is the "box" portion. How big you make it and how it's actually constructed depends on your space - the bigger the better, but even a small bog is easier to maintain than a bio filter.

If you want to use a skimmer on the pond, point D makes the most sense because it will function best there. But that does mean you will have two pumps - one at D in the skimmer and one at C in a pump vault. Not unheard of, and in fact many recommend building in two pumps just for redundancy.

Putting it at C, where I believe you intend to have a negative edge and underground water storage with water passing over gravel, just doesn't compute with me. A skimmer functions by pulling water in through the opening - how deep is that pooling water going to be at C? Are you burying the skimmer in the gravel?

Sorry - I'm not great with design concepts, but your drawing helps immensely!

Thanks for raising these questions. Clearly I didn't think this through well enough, and my lack of understanding was probably going to create a system that wasn't functional.

A few months ago I built a simple little water feature with a basin sunk in the ground, a small pump, a few pieces of flagstone covering it, a porcelain fish on top, and a rubber tube that fills the fish with water, spilling out of its mouth. I guess I figured a pond would simply be the same thing but at a bigger scale, haha. Little did I know that it's much more involved. I was just going to sink the skimmer in the ground at the end of my stream and pump the water back to the waterfall. I figured the pump would create the flow of water and it would cycle from there. Glad I found you all before I got too far on this.

So putting a skimmer at point D is something I'll do if you really feel the pond needs it there. It will be a bit of a work routing the flex tubing all the way around back to the berm where I want to add the bog. Electrical as well - I'm assuming the pump needs to be near the skimmer.

When you say it doesn't compute for you that I skim at point C, would it be better if I widened the stream so the entire pond is more "U" shape? In my mind, it still seems most logical for the water to enter the pond on one end and leave the pond on the other end.

 

[stavo]

Koi are fine in 2 - 2-1/2 feet of water. I was just thinking about the winter when 10"-12" may become ice...that is depending on the climate where you are located. When it comes to koi, they can grow very big and pretty fast too. So the deeper, the better.
You might want to look at shubunkins. They are beautiful fish with long flowing fins. They don't get anywhere near the size of some koi. They don't need as much room as koi.

I've decided against koi - I've read that they need to be fed 2-4 times a day and I travel a fair amount. Also Lisak1 pointed out that my pond isn't quite large enough for them to thrive. And I don't want to constantly deal with predators (I've seen herons here) so I'd rather have less expensive but hopefully more evasive fish so they can fend for themselves. So for shubunkins or minnows or whatever else (I haven't researched fish yet), do you still recommend I dig deeper? Freezing shouldn't be an issue where I live in Northern Cal - the temps rarely drop below 30. Come to think of it, should I consider going deeper for the opposite reason - 100+ degrees in summer?

 

[GBBUDD]

I have to go a different route with your design . i would be concerned having two areas drawing from the surface at two different points in a medium sized pond i'd be concerned your creating a dead space between the two. I placed my first skimmer along side the falls but the falls were angled off to one side creating a current around the pond. it worked very well. Then i put the extention on the pond creating a similar shape as your design and in the middle theirs almost no current it creates a swirling area that goes know where. I'd think about the negative edge at c but at the two blue X i would have either a return jet or a pump this will keep the middle and the bottom circulation toward the negative edge and there will be no dead spots . id use a small pump at the blue X facing as shown or have return jets

 

[stavo]

I have to go a different route with your design . i would be concerned having two areas drawing from the surface at two different points in a medium sized pond i'd be concerned your creating a dead space between the two. I placed my first skimmer along side the falls but the falls were angled off to one side creating a current around the pond. it worked very well. Then i put the extention on the pond creating a similar shape as your design and in the middle theirs almost no current it creates a swirling area that goes know where. I'd think about the negative edge at c but at the two blue X i would have either a return jet or a pump this will keep the middle and the bottom circulation toward the negative edge and there will be no dead spots . id use a small pump at the blue X facing as shown or have return jets
View attachment 135913

I certainly don't want any dead space, but if water is being drawn from the very end (C), how can there be a dead space, other than maybe in one of the outer corners where the current just cuts the corner tightly?

 

[Lisak1]

I'd do whatever @GBBUDD suggests - he's way better at the construction details!

I honestly would skip the skimmer altogether. A negative edge or intake bay functions as good or better, in my opinion, and you just don't need it. Especially since you mentioned you travel a good deal, a skimmer can be a problem.

 

[GBBUDD]

The dead space i was hinting at would be with the use of two skimmer sources as while the one at the end of the pond would draw from only one direction. if you have two sources the skimmer in the middle will draw from all directions and where it and the other skimmer will have a push pull kinda are where they are both trying to pull water to them and in the middle that will create a area where the water is neutral and there's not much happening. The biggest advantage to a negative edge is making it very shallow and WIDE this will pull from the surface more effectively with more pull. giving debris less of a chance to settle and fall to the bottom. but if it does start to is where the return jets or small pumps come into play they will help push the water in the direction of the negative edge and as say a leaf gets saturated it sinks very very slowly it will linger at different levels before it makes it way all the way to the bottom. the corners will have a circular rotation as the water fall in one area will be pushing toward D and the pump below would spin the water as it pushes toward the bridge . so even if something gets in the rotation it's just a matter or cycles until it gets drawn out and pushed toward the negative edge . i have a video on my blog where i dropped a floating go pro in the water and it spun around the pond and within two rotations it was pulled into the skimmer. and i found that if i made the water level very shallow leading up to the skimmer or negative edge the more efferent it worked the further out it pulled debris in IMO

 

[Laaf]

Your pond will be beautiful! I have a much smaller pond for now. I have one pump that feeds the waterfall, and a second pump that feeds my bog filter. I like that it is a duplicate system so if one pump goes out I have some time to replace it versus urgency if I only had one.

I would take your current lay out and keep the bigger waterfall with one pump feeding it. And make the skinny stream a smaller waterfall that falls into a bog filter, or make it a slightly raised bog filter that overflows into the pond with a waterfall. I think that will give you excellent water flow with filtration and aeration. You could make a bigger section of your stream section a bog. But I think the fish will really enjoy swimming "upstream" there if you have room for a bog beyond the current stream.

You might put your pumps right by the bridge. The bridge supports can help hide the cords, and it will be easy to know where to find them to clean them. You can even cross the pumps so the water is really circulating. So the pump that draws from the skinnier end feeds the big waterfall, and pump closer to the waterfall feeds the skinny area. It is not a problem if the pump has a longer section of tubing running under water to where it needs to go, and having the tubing exit close to where you want the water. (I prefer that to a longer section buried under dirt since if it gets a leak, it is still in the pond)

I would make it bigger and deeper than you think you need. It is much easier to do it now than to expand it later. (I have to expand )

 

[stavo]

Okay, now you all got me thinking... How about something like this?

Two pumps, B and C.
B feeds A, which flows off the berm in the form of a waterfall.
C feeds D, which supplies the bog filter, from which water then flows into the stream, cascading over a series of small weirs.
Water from both sources meets somewhere around the bridge.

Most importantly, will this work?

What can I use to catch leaves? I don't really have room for an intake bay. There wouldn't be a ton of leaves initially, but last summer I planted an arbutus marina just to the right of this layout which will some day extend over the pond. They're not deciduous, but I understand that they're nonetheless messy (leaves, bark, blossoms, and fruit).

 

[brokensword]

Looks good to me but I'd think this way (it's what I did); consider a Y and two valves at A and D. Doing this allows you to create exactly the flow you want going over your waterfalls (berm and bog). The other portion of each Y you can direct back into the pond for more 'waterfall/aeration'. Think of it as an overflow.

Also, a pro tip I was given; whatever the output size of your pump (in my case, it was 1-1/2"), double the pipe size right at the outlet (I used a 3" to 1-1/2" adaptor) , then Y off soon thereafter, with reducing adaptors back to the original pipe size (so I attached a 3 to 1-1/2 adaptor right at the pump, then to a 3" Y with one leg reduced to 1-1/2", then another 3-1-1/2 reducer on the other leg). What this does, and it was hard for me to believe, is it allows your pump to work almost to capacity (taking into account any head issues). That is, you'll actually pump more water with the doubled adaptor to Y combo then just with one outlet pipe of the original size. If you have 2" outlet, I'd still go to a 3" adaptor then reduce down to 2" again.

Of course, this means you'll now have 2 hoses/pipe for each pump, but that's where more options can come into play. In my case, I have one lead with the Y and valve combo at EACH of my 2 waterfalls (giving me another lead to wherever, in my case, to some marginal plants at the top of my wfall). The other leg from the pump feeds into my bog, so I have 2 leads to the bog (my bog is large) because I have 2 pumps.

So looking at your diagram, you could obstensibly do similarly in that you'd have 1 pump with two leads; one goes to your bog with a valve at the bog for easy manipulation, and the other empties anywhere you want to create either flow or aeration or both. Should help with any dead spots. The other pump's leads go to your wfall (with a valve for easy manipulation again) and the secondary lead again empties into the pond on that side. You can even create more wfalls, if you get creative, i.e. planning a rock edge that is layered and having this secondary lead flow over and down your rocks, then into the pond proper.

All sorts of options this way and as noted earlier, multiple pumps mean if one dies, you're still okay re flow and aeration.

It does mean more parts but considering all you're going to spend anyway, hardly a hit.


I don't have an easy answer for your leaf problem as my pond is screen enclosed, so I have minimal leaf drop. What a lot of peeps do is spread a net over top before the leaves fall and that directs them off and out of your pond. Others can chime in exatly how effective it is. Typically, you build a hoop house type frame and pull the net overtop for the season.
Just some ideas.

A pic of my layout, below;

 

[Lisak1]

Why not just the bog feeding the waterfall? I mean, you can have more than one waterfall on a pond, I just don't know about the water coming from two different directions. Won't it just whirlpool in the middle? Is the left side still meant to be a stream?