Darksaber Pond - My Next Adventure

[Lisak1]

I think the large and small tree stumps, moss, large boulders and lack of a defined shape helped in that regard

Definitely. I think you can always tell when someone has spent time in nature, observing how ponds and streams and things look when they are developed naturally. Add the eye of an artist and you get a beautiful pond!

 

[GBBUDD]

Your to kind
Thank you

I hope to build an other

 

[milonedp]

Day 22 - Work on the back of the pond and the start of the waterfall.

 

[milonedp]

Day 23 - More work on the waterfall and the beginning of the stream.

 

[CountryEscape]

Wow this has been fun watching the build videos. We had a large pond built for us this past summer. Never thought about doing a time lapse. Your videos bring back those memories. My pond is just under 10,000 gal and now looks small in comparison to yours. Can’t wait to see the finished project... bet you are really enjoying the process as I did, so I won’t ask you to hurry.

 

[milonedp]

Thanks! The progress has been great to watch, especially last week as I had a few vacation days while they were working and I just sat out there and watched all day. I'm going to move some of the vacation days I had planned for this week to next week so that I can do the same again. I think that'll be great especially as the finer details start to come together.

This week there won't be any progress as the team mastermind is on vacation so other than me cleaning some of the rocks (I wanted to play a bit) nothing has been done since last Wednesday and won't start up again till next Monday. I think there is still a video on the camera that I need to pull down and upload, I'll try to get that later today.

Updated schedule (but I'm not forcing anything):
Week Ended the 8th
- Finish the pond
- Electrical
- Landscape Architect update the plans based on the final pond
Week Ended the 15th
- Irrigation
End of Month
- Landscaping
February
- I may start QTing some fish inside
April
- Plant the wetland, stream, intake bay
- Start stocking fish

 

[j.w]

@milonedp what a fantastic creation and neat getting to see it all come together in that video!

 

[GBBUDD]

Would love to see some photos around the pond. AND the bog people here myself included love to see how certain conditions are worked such as the top of the stacked slate walls i did catch what looked like aquablocks pannel being placed ontop of tge stacked slate and under the capping stone. Now sure as to why .

 

[GBBUDD]

One of the major questions we always get is how to finish the edges how to hide the liner both from that ridge stone to that stone also hiding the liner at the surface into the pond

 

[Lisak1]

Love watching this come together! This is a great build!

 

[milonedp]

Would love to see some photos around the pond. AND the bog people here myself included love to see how certain conditions are worked such as the top of the stacked slate walls i did catch what looked like aquablocks pannel being placed ontop of tge stacked slate and under the capping stone. Now sure as to why .

I'll get some pictures when it's light out, (if I forget remind me of exactly what you'd like to see). It wasn't aquablock panels but some heavier duty support, I don't know the exact name, I'll grab a pic of those too. I think it's meant to better spread the weight of the rock across the sides of the walls which is where the most support is.

I'm interested to see how they hide the liner on the front side too, on the backside the liner goes up so much higher than the pond itself that my guess is they'll just pull it up high and bury it, the front side where the water level is near the top of those rocks is going to be more challenging. That said once we do the landscaping later next month that area will probably all end up pea stone with some steppers going over to the stairs so they may just bring it right up to ground level then we put the ground cover over the liner then the peastone on top so the gravel in the pond blurs into the peastone on the ground, we will see...

 

[CountryEscape]

I totally agree with you to move your vacation days so you can sit in your chair and watch the progress!!! I panicked when my pond guys asked if they could start on a Friday, when I was going to be gone Thurs-Sun that weekend to go back to IL to get my koi and goldfish, rocks and plants. I didn’t want to miss any of the building, even seeing the huge forklifts they used to bring the rock into the yard was exciting to me! (I added up over 20 tons of rock for the pond, plus patio blocks/stones for the patio, so the yard gained 25-30 tons of weight this summer!) They agreed to wait until the following week, and filled in with a small job in the meantime. Of course, I retired this year, so I had the luxury of being here to watch. I found it extremely hard to do anything else while they were here. Our yard was all dirt by time the pond and then stone patio were completed, but it was oh so worth it!!! Sowed grass Labor Day weekend and a month of watering later it was solid green again.

 

[GBBUDD]

@CountryEscape it would be nice to see more of your pond this spring /summer they did a great job and would love t o see it mature.

 

[CountryEscape]

@CountryEscape it would be nice to see more of your pond this spring /summer they did a great job and would love t o see it mature.

I can’t wait to see how the pond looks when it “wakes up” in spring in Ohio!!! Attached is a picture right now. It’s the first time I’ve netted a pond. Built the cover myself with conduit and PVC and two nets that I zip tied together. (I used a zillion zip ties because didn’t think of fishing line until later, and thread of any type would disintegrate in short order.)

 

[milonedp]

Question, so the rocks and gravel were varying degrees of dirty and the weather has been terrible which has resulted in clay and mud getting into the pond. I spent near two days trying to get rid of the worst of it only to dig down to the protective liner in a few areas that had water running through it clean and see a ton of mud. We are going to get more rain over the weekend so next week will introduce more mud.

Is there a way to clean this after filling, using micron filter socks before it goes into the wetland? Or let it all settle it in the weekend then put the wetland? Some of its so deep in the gravel bed that you can only see it when you dig down into it, sterling in it, hose directly at the top of the gravel did nothing to dislodge it. Will that be an issue? Any thoughts are greatly appreciated!