How high can i rock pond wall

[DerekOR]

Try a rock shelf all around...but you’ll need flat rocks...my shelf goes down about 15” and is about 12”
wide...it’s filled up to the top with flat rocks and the rocks extend over the liner edge.

This drawing was made by a friend. I described our shelf and she drew this...our rocks are flatter
then the photo shows.

That's the trick - i barely have any flat ones . But I will try to use those for what the left side of the picture shows...

 

[Lisak1]

Our neighbor rented an excavator a few weeks ago and I watched him for three minutes and realized he had no clue what he was doing. Sure enough, 5 minutes later we heard a giant BANG - he tipped the whole thing over trying to get up on his cement patio. He was fine, but embarrassed.

@GBBUDD gives good advice... practice and work slowly if you've never done it before.

Your rock almost looks like blue stone to me... very pretty!

 

[GBBUDD]

JHN works with rock every day i would listen to his take as well. He restores shore lines a very tough job mother nature can show you who's boss in a hurry he has to know what rock he's getting or she will tear it apart and spit it out

Some times i wish i bought my rock i would have gone for the weathered lime stone. they call it weathered but i say highly fractured and worn.

 

[GBBUDD]

@GBBUDD gives good advice... practice and work slowly if you've never done it before.

Thanks @lisa but after this covid thread i doubt many pay attention anymore but thats ok its to help future ponders learn before they pull the trigger

 

[DerekOR]

Our neighbor rented an excavator a few weeks ago and I watched him for three minutes and realized he had no clue what he was doing. Sure enough, 5 minutes later we heard a giant BANG - he tipped the whole thing over trying to get up on his cement patio. He was fine, but embarrassed.

@GBBUDD gives good advice... practice and work slowly if you've never done it before.

Your rock almost looks like blue stone to me... very pretty!

Wow - that's really scary. Hopefully nothing even close to that happens to be if I use one!

 

[DerekOR]

Was thinking the same thing with the excavator.

That load of rock is granite, fairly typical blue gray color. Would still protect the liner with 8oz non woven fabric, as when that stuff is dumped some of the rocks can chip causing very sharp edges just like the basalt you mentioned.

Derek one other suggestion is make sure all the rock especially the smaller stuff is actually rock and not compressed dirt. Fairly common to get a few of these with that size rock bought by the dump truck load. It looks just like the rock but it will crumble and fall apart over time. Just don’t want you using a rock like that to do anything structural in the pond. The compressed dirt looks slightly different color wise and edges can be a little rounded and if you aren’t sure about one of the rocks just bang it into another one, the granite rocks make a tinny sound almost like metal being banged together, if it is just hard dirt it won’t make that sound and may even crumble abit.

jhn - thanks for the tip! I'm using geotextile on top of the liner for this very reason. On the walls and waterfall I'm using in this order:
- 1" coating of mortar to protect against chipmunks
- carpet
- geotextile
- liner
- geotextile

 

[Phaewryn]

after this covid thread i doubt many pay attention anymore but thats ok its to help future ponders learn before they pull the trigger

I'm not going to stop taking your advice on ponding just because you went off the rails in an OT thread. We can't all be experts in every area.

 

[combatwombat]

@DerekOR: Did you end up solving this problem? How'd it go?

I'm just up the road from you in Portland, and your rock looks just like the piles of basalt they pull out of the Columbia River and sell at every stone yard in the area for about $60/ton. But I also don't know anything about rocks! What was the cost of that granite?

 

[DerekOR]

@DerekOR: Did you end up solving this problem? How'd it go?

I'm just up the road from you in Portland, and your rock looks just like the piles of basalt they pull out of the Columbia River and sell at every stone yard in the area for about $60/ton. But I also don't know anything about rocks! What was the cost of that granite?

it went really well actually. some of the advice I got from members here was fantastic. the trick was to keep the mortar not too wet when mixing and keep it moist with a spray hose every 20 mins or so for a couple hours. I've put a couple pics below as well as current look of pond. rock was $895 delivered for 16 tons. I live about 15 mins from a knife river granite quarry.

 

[DerekOR]

here are the promised pics. up top is the bog I'm still active on completing.

 

[combatwombat]

Great! Looks like you found a good solution. I don't have any tall wall shelves like you do, but I have pretty sandy soil, and my 18-24" tall shelves are already collapsing a bit as I walk on them after digging on Friday. Will keep this idea in the back of my mind as I rock in the pond.

 

[GBBUDD]

looks pretty good to me well done. i like the water flow to the right of the photo makes it look real and not just a round puddle or kiddie pool . you'll get all kinds or interesting things to grow there like moss. and pitcher plants love that type of area mix peat and sand and just keep the feet wet keep the main plant out from sitting in the water.

 

[DerekOR]

Great! Looks like you found a good solution. I don't have any tall wall shelves like you do, but I have pretty sandy soil, and my 18-24" tall shelves are already collapsing a bit as I walk on them after digging on Friday. Will keep this idea in the back of my mind as I rock in the pond.

I would recommend using mortar. It is pretty simple to work with once you get the hang of it. The bags are only maybe $7, and it goes a pretty long way! That coupled with some nice rocks and it does well. I'm really happy with how my project came out with all the input from the folks here .

 

[DerekOR]

looks pretty good to me well done. i like the water flow to the right of the photo makes it look real and not just a round puddle or kiddie pool . you'll get all kinds or interesting things to grow there like moss. and pitcher plants love that type of area mix peat and sand and just keep the feet wet keep the main plant out from sitting in the water.

Here's a more recent pic - starting on the deck now soon which will be over top of a lot of that pea gravel you see there. There will be a little bridge which goes from the patio across that small pond there (the small pond up close is maybe 4' x 10'. The far pond is ~12'x15' I think. The deck will be over the bog with areas for planting at the far end by the fence (top right of pic). Have those baskets with quilt batting in them under the waterfalls to try and get all the sediment out. It is working well, but taking a while!

GBBUDD - you can just barely see there between the two ponds in the middle of the pic if you look hard an air hose running into a T. That connects to an under-gravel suction grid for an airlift. I think you mentioned you tried, but could never get yours to work. I followed a design in pond-trader magazine, and mine fired up right away with no issues. So I was happy about that - you got me pretty nervous there for a while .

All total my wife and I have moved ~120 tons of rock on this project by hand or wheelbarrow (yes you read that right - 240,000 lbs). And the crazy thing is we still aren't halfway done with the project! There is a whole other pond we are putting in to the left of this pick with a river which will run into these two ponds you see here. That will be a 2021 project for sure.

 

[brokensword]

I know I'm late to the party but thought I'd give a bit of advice re mortar; this is coming from having a dad who was a bricklayer for 40 years. Mortar is NOT waterproof. Trust me, I helped fixed many a chimney where water eventually destroyed the mortar. Cement, on the other hand, is waterproof as would concrete (which is just Portland cement, sand, and round small stone).

There's also hydraulic cement that is waterproof.

Had this out with Waterbug one time, who thought he knew a lot about cement, but since my dad had 4 large, over 150 gallon concrete aquariums that never leaked, I think he knew what he was doing. The concrete was 'painted' with a slurry made from Portland cement powder. It did the trick for years. So, if you ever have to redo anything, the idea would be to use cement (not mortar) and even brush on the same slurry once your joints have set.

Also, realize that if your pond freeezes as low as your mortared wall, the water that gets inside your mortar joints is going to freeze also and that's when you'll start to see how expansion of ice destroys a lot of things.

I would expect with time, your mortared rock wall will start to come apart. Hopefully you have some sort of angle to this wall and they'll just lock together with whatever sediment/algae/biofilm grows on it.