I'm a newbie to ponding and bogging, but have been reading a lot here and on Koiphen, so feel that I have at least some handle on what to do. However, I'm interested in whatever comments people want to make about what I'm attempting here. I've learned a lot from reading Addy1's posts, and the comments of others. Now I'm digging! And the no-winter Winter has so far been fantastic for making progress, though perhaps not so great for some plants and for the climate in general. We are having days of 60 and 70 degrees in December 2015, which is the warmest that we have had in the nearly-40 years that we have lived in this town and this house.
I'm building on a slightly-sloped portion of our backyard: it drops about 5 feet in 80 feet. The bog will be at the top of that slope, and the pond at the bottom. A pump-pit will be adjacent to the pond, and send the water back to the bog. Both bog and pond will be concrete foundation, plus two rows of concrete block, and an EPDM liner. The bog will have below-gravel piping to distribute the water in an upflow manner. The pond has a bottom drain and two tangential pond returns to keep the water moving along towards the bottom drain (it's what some call a river-flow design), and the stream from the bog enters the pond at the end opposite the bottom drain.
There is also space allocated for a rain garden, which will be where the excess water goes when we have any significant rainfall. The town here requires that ponds be less than 24” deep, or that we fence the area, which we aren’t about to do for appearance reasons. Therefore, any water coming into the pond has to have an exit, which will be via an overflow pipe to the rain garden. That will also take care of the excess water that comes into the pond as the stream is shut down.
Progress so far:
- bog and pond foundations are in and I got those done at the same time as I had a concrete crew in here concreting the second half of our basement floor. Saved me from mixing a whole lot of bags of concrete.
- Concrete blocks are in place with rebar and the cells are all filled with concrete. So they are done to the point of putting cap stones or rocks on top. That was still 70 sixty-pound bags of concrete mix. I bought a cheapo Harbor Freight concrete mixer which sounds as though each bag mixed will be its last, but it keeps chugging along.
- Both bog and pond are dug out to the depth that I need, with maybe a little tuning yet to happen.
Next step: dig out the pump pit, and construct the floor, sump pit, concrete block walls, rebar, fill cells in block. Maybe the warm weather will permit some more of this to happen yet this Winter.
Now: how do I post pictures to this forum? everything that I try to post comes back with an error message that the file is too large.
Bob
I'm building on a slightly-sloped portion of our backyard: it drops about 5 feet in 80 feet. The bog will be at the top of that slope, and the pond at the bottom. A pump-pit will be adjacent to the pond, and send the water back to the bog. Both bog and pond will be concrete foundation, plus two rows of concrete block, and an EPDM liner. The bog will have below-gravel piping to distribute the water in an upflow manner. The pond has a bottom drain and two tangential pond returns to keep the water moving along towards the bottom drain (it's what some call a river-flow design), and the stream from the bog enters the pond at the end opposite the bottom drain.
There is also space allocated for a rain garden, which will be where the excess water goes when we have any significant rainfall. The town here requires that ponds be less than 24” deep, or that we fence the area, which we aren’t about to do for appearance reasons. Therefore, any water coming into the pond has to have an exit, which will be via an overflow pipe to the rain garden. That will also take care of the excess water that comes into the pond as the stream is shut down.
Progress so far:
- bog and pond foundations are in and I got those done at the same time as I had a concrete crew in here concreting the second half of our basement floor. Saved me from mixing a whole lot of bags of concrete.
- Concrete blocks are in place with rebar and the cells are all filled with concrete. So they are done to the point of putting cap stones or rocks on top. That was still 70 sixty-pound bags of concrete mix. I bought a cheapo Harbor Freight concrete mixer which sounds as though each bag mixed will be its last, but it keeps chugging along.
- Both bog and pond are dug out to the depth that I need, with maybe a little tuning yet to happen.
Next step: dig out the pump pit, and construct the floor, sump pit, concrete block walls, rebar, fill cells in block. Maybe the warm weather will permit some more of this to happen yet this Winter.
Now: how do I post pictures to this forum? everything that I try to post comes back with an error message that the file is too large.
Bob
