Darksaber Pond - My Next Adventure

[GBBUDD]

We want to live in the space for a season or two before we decide how we redo that full 24 by 24 space and build a fireplace into it.

Smart

I Think your going to find if your adding plants and fish you'll be sitting up close and personal to the ponds edge. a Pergola with one of the two person hammock swings will knock you out on those lazy days. there's only one thing better and then being put to sleep by the sounds of a waterfall and a birds singing. and that's to wake up to that sounds extremely peaceful. One hell of a lot better then my Super loud collection of sirens and alarms in the morning.

I love how your pond builder has areas where the rocks are in the pond and the water jogs in and out. to me that's the best design by far and yet is so overlooked even by the pros.

I believe i see the foam area and if it's possible it could look really cool if you had columns of the stacked slate but make them like the crooked old man not straight up that way it will look like a natural transition from stacked slate to boulders Kind of like a roman building with columns and overhangs could be really cool place for the fish and or plats to be set.

 

[CountryEscape]

Wow I’m catching up and this is simply amazing! I love the jagged cut rocks the waterfall flows through like fingers sticking up. Very neat idea. I had so much fun watching the pond builders selecting the rocks for the edge and how they placed them. Yours have done an amazing job!

 

[milonedp]

Love the fact that they used the weathered lime stone.

Me too that was a must have! At first the project came in above budget and that was one of the things they wanted to cut and I said I'd rather a smaller steam or smaller system overall to get the weathered limestone.

 

[milonedp]

I love the jagged cut rocks the waterfall flows through like fingers sticking up. Very neat idea.

He did such an awesome job design that part! I remember him asking us if we wanted a jagged look or a sheeting style waterfall there and my wife that she wanted "something with character" and we just let him do his thing.

I'll have to get a video behind it for you all to see there are so many nooks and crannies in those rocks. I think with a little more cleaning and maybe a tiny chisel I can get a tiny steam to come down around on the left side where that rock has a crack in it.

Plus as a bonus the original design didn't have the waterfall coming out of the wetland so we ended up with two falls (one of each type) and the main one bigger than planned.

 

[Jhn]

The Pond came out great, sounds Like you selected a pond contractor that knows what he is doing.

 

[GBBUDD]

There's two recent pro builds this one and @CountryEscape both were very obvious these were not first time builds and they both show how different they can be at the same time

 

[milonedp]

View from the deck

 

[milonedp]

 

[GBBUDD]

View attachment 136093
The bog in action even without plants the stones starting on its own. here's the before and your latest's shows how it cleared up the water where you can see the bottom even at what 6 feet deep? @milonedp

 

[GBBUDD]

How big is your bog , and how many aquablocks did they use

 

[milonedp]

I drained and rinsed the whole thing twice (2 days each time) so as great as that wetland is going to be that was mostly physical labor.

4 feet deep. I'll still rinse it out fully at least one more (but probably two more) times. I really don't want anything kicking up when the girls go swimming. If I can get the majority of that clay out after the landscaping is fine then regular annual wetland maintenance should be enough.

It's 20 by 10, not sure on the count of aquablox.

 

[GBBUDD]

All the rinsing wont dig it out of the gravel in the bottom. I wouldn't worry so much about it the girls will swim water will cloud and the next morning it will be crystal clear

 

[milonedp]

The larger particles yes but I'm definitely making progress with the finer silt, it was noticeably clearer each time with a load of it coming out.

You can see the clouds of silt getting stirred up with the hose. I'm pretty sure the issue is unique to this type of clay / shale and how much got in during construction and even now while we wait for the rest of the yard to be done what is getting tracked in on boots. It's hard to describe how terrible this stuff is, it's so fine that you find dust particles of it upstairs in our house when the yard was dry (early in the construction of the pond before all the rain). When the neighborhood was being built and the only construction was a half-mile away we'd still regularly get a light dusting on everything. You could literally see it in the finer size filter pads for the AC Unit and on electronic screens.

Either way, I like playing in it so I don't mind (if the rain ever stops and we can get the rest of the yard complete) doing it one or two more times before we add plants and fish. We are probably still 2ish months away from that so I have time. Plus when we do the landscape I have another ton or two of gravel that will be in or at the water's edge that will also need to be rinsed down.

 

[GBBUDD]

If you have tons of mud and silt running I'm surprised the town hasn't got on you for mud run off they call turbidity . But either way Spreading STRAW over the area can do more then you could ever believe especially in keeping your soils stable for when you do want to start landscaping. I have never had a landscaper complain of working over hay but im not residential construction these days . worst case they may charge a little to scrape it back . but over all it's a huge benefit

 

[CountryEscape]

GBBUDD thanks for that major compliment!!! Comparing my lovely pond to milonedp’s masterpiece is so nice! Yes, it is obvious that my pond was also built by professionals, though. I was just like the author here. I had to be home to watch each and every step of the way.
When they brought in the skids of tons and tons of boulders, I remember being so excited to see moss on many of them!!! The workers commented that some homeowners had them scrape off any moss, they thought the rocks were dirty!!! OMG you pay extra for the moss for goodness sake. And I have limestone in my dirt here in SW Ohio, so was glad they didn’t use any of it in the boulders. I have literally lined my whole backyard flower beds with the flat stones dug up while planting flowers, as well as pulling out rocks while the pond and patio were built. Fossils on almost every rock, too. I give rocks away to little kids that notice the fossils.
I’m including just thumbnails of a few photos of our pond from last year, it’s first year. Keep in mind my water is and has been crystal clear since day 14, with fish in it! I have smooth round rocks on the bottom surfaces, and when I went in to trim lilies, I never stirred up anything. I was amazed!!! The rocks keep the koi from stirring up the bottom, too. I’ve included a couple pictures of the fossils in the flat and round stones.