HDRPE liner question....

[JenH]

Hi everyone! Working on my pond tonight and finally got to the liner stage.... Got this sucker in and OMG it’s so hard to fold it!! Since my pond is both below and above ground and square.... the corners and sides are far from perfect. My digging skills in our hard Indiana clay suck.

Anyway..... struggling to get it folded well. I got it in and started filling to help me get it everywhere it needs to be which helped but I still really had a helluva time folding and it’s no where near as nice and smooth as I’ve been able to get with EPDM.

Here are some pics..... please any thoughts, suggestions, tricks... anything!

 

[poconojoe]

Well, I guess you're basically venting and I get that. And since you've already filled it, there's not really much that can be done.

No liner is going to be perfect. There's always going to be creases somewhere. The one plus is that eventually the liner will colonize with a nice biofilm, so it shouldn't be that noticable.

I used HDRPE this Spring when I built my bog. It was indeed quite stiff compared to EPDM, but EPDM doesn't fold all that well either. Yeah, it's more pliable, but doesnt stay put. It's so rubbery that it just bounces back from where you folded it. I still have one EPDM fold in the corner of my pond that bugs me. And that install was some 10 years ago. Yes, I think HDRPE is harder to work with, but it stays put once you get a good fold. The fold has to be one long fold that continues all the way to the edge of the fabric. You can't just fold it in the middle somewhere, if that makes sense.

Sorry you had to struggle, but it was not in jest. Your pond will be awesome once it's all done!

 

[poconojoe]

Oh, and as a note, try not to trim your liner to an exact fit. It's always a good idea to leave some liner folded up. You never know. There could be settling, you could decide to make a change somewhere. Fold it up under whatever you use as a capping to play it safe.