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[Shdwdrgn]

DrDave - no worries here. First, this isn't a pressure-treated wood. Second, the plan is to drape the rubber liner over the top of the wood shelf, then stack the sandstone on top of the liner.

Thanks for the warning though. I never liked PT boards - you ever get a splinter off one of those? Nasty!

 

[Shdwdrgn]

Back to work today, and was off to a bad start. It rained last night, so I had a muddy mess to deal with. My first order of business was to get down the carpet, and once I got some of it in place, I didn't have to deal with the mud. With such a large space, I was able to lay down a lot bigger pieces, and had the whole pond completely carpeted by mid-afternoon. A bit of ducttape to hold the smaller pieces in place, and it was ready to go...

My sister and wife helped get the liner pulled out into place. Turns out I didn't need nearly the length I expected. I'm going to have a good-sized chunk to cut off the end, so the extra will be nice to have on hand.

I already cut out a large piece from one corner of the liner, and doubled-up the material over the waterfall. I wanted to make sure the bricks are sitting on some throw-away liner material, and there was plenty of excess to cut from. We put the first couple of bricks in place to hold the liner up. The back wall will be pinned in place by the waterfall, so once we start filling the pond, we'll have to pull the liner from the front side to tighten it up. I've been really happy with how the liner laid out. Despite the odd shape of the pond, we still managed to lay it flat with only four major folds.

I can hear the thunder outside. We have another rain storm coming through tonight. I was really hoping the pond would stay dry until I finished the waterfall, since I have to stand in the bottom of the pond to stack up the waterfall bricks.

So tomorrow I'm going to finish up the wall behind the filter barrels to hold the dirt that will brace up the waterfall, then I have to find a few more bricks that will jut out from the wall and break up the flow of water down the waterfall. Once I have the last material, I can get started building the waterfall. I'm really anxious about this particular part of the construction, because I've never stacked a brick wall before, and it will be very difficult to take it apart and rebuild later on. This will take a bit before I'm happy with it, so it could take a day or two before I'm finished with it.

But then I can start filling the pond! Yay!!!

 

[addy1]

:lol::claphands::claphands:Great looking. I have always taken extra liner and anywhere I have rocks that extra liner is below them. My stream is double lined, keeps the sun off the real liner, also protects it from the rocks and any deer that decide to walk the stream, like they were doing when I first built it. So far they have been staying away this spring.

All waterfalls are double lined due to the amount of rock that is placed in them.

That is going to be a really nice set up you have done. Good job!

 

[Shdwdrgn]

We had thunderstorms on and off all night. Not a lot of rain, but I had 3" of water in the bottom of the pond this morning. Got it scooped out, went shopping for supplies, ate lunch, and it started raining again! My sister had come over to help, but between the rain and the cold wind, we decided to call it a day.

I headed up to Ace hardware to pick up some T-nuts and fender washers. I was worried that there was nothing to hold the top of the back wall in place when I filled behind the waterfall with dirt. My solution was a board across the front face of the barrels, then two 3/8" threaded rods (using the T-nuts and washers) to tie the front and back boards together. There's not much holding up the front right now, but once the area is filled with dirt, then the board won't go anywhere.

I finished up with another piece of thin carpet draped over the front to protect the liner from the steel parts. You can see the threaded rods running up against the sides of each barrel.

About the time I finished all this and was getting ready to go inside for a nap, the sun came out and it got warm. So I figured I would make a start on the waterfall and see how far I got before it tried to rain again. I managed to make it until dinner time. These bricks are a pain, because even though they're cut, they still don't line up very well for thickness. I guess they assume people are going to use them with cement. I just had to get creative and make use of the pieces I had - plus make use of my amateur rock-cutting skills (a hammer and a railroad spike) to trim up pieces. Despite the loose fit, the wall feels fairly secure. It won't come down from water or birds or stray balls.

I only have another 8-10 inches of wall left to build tomorrow, and the forecast is for sunshine through Friday. It shouldn't take long to finish up the waterfall, so it's looking promising that we can start filling the big pond tomorrow!

 

[j.w]

You've done a fabulous job and glad you will get some dry weather to finish more of it. Extra liner comes in handy for other jobs also like if you want a flower bed and you don't want to dig it all out. I just dig the shape of the bed out and put a plastic border around it and then lay the liner over the grass and leave it there for a year and then voila no grass to dig out. Then when the year is up I take a truckload of compost and dump it over the area and start planting. It's kind of mounded that way and I call them my island gardens

This pic was taken several yrs ago. It's all grown up now.

 

[addy1]

We used black liner, black garbage bags mid summer to kill weeds in arizona, usually took 1-2 days mid summer and they were cooked lol.

Love the rock waterfall wall you are doing!

I am not sure how you are doing your waterfall sides, my waterfall in the arizona is built a little similar, rock wise, the one big issue I had is the water hitting the sticking out rocks and going wherever it wanted to, i.e. splash.

That one rock on the far side might send the water out of your liner area. Love the look of what you are doing, I was surprised at how the water hitting those rocks cause me so much trouble.

I had to rearrange to keep the water in the pond and not everywhere else. Also since it was at the top of my stream, the liner had to go out around 5 feet sloped up to catch the spray. a liner basin, then go into the stream to the pond.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

addy - The waterfall extends out about a foot on either side of where I expect the water to actually flow, so those outside ledges won't actually catch anything. What I'm hoping to do is wrap the liner around the edges of the waterfall, then trim it with some cedar planks. I've been eyeballing some periwinkle to grow around the waterfall, since its an evergreen. Once I get the water flowing, then we'll see where it wants to flow and splash, and work from there.

 

[blessedfamily]

J.W I love love your trees you have planted..beautiful.

 

[j.w]

Thanks and look how much they've grown. I just took this picture a few minutes ago.

 

[addy1]

Nice jw it is all that rain you get! lol

 

[addy1]

addy - The waterfall extends out about a foot on either side of where I expect the water to actually flow, so those outside ledges won't actually catch anything. What I'm hoping to do is wrap the liner around the edges of the waterfall, then trim it with some cedar planks. I've been eyeballing some periwinkle to grow around the waterfall, since its an evergreen. Once I get the water flowing, then we'll see where it wants to flow and splash, and work from there.

Great, I just know the issues it gave me lol, finally got it settled down as far as splash and water loss.

 

[Shdwdrgn]

j.w. - wow you have a huge yard! That looks really cool, though. I imagine its hard to not go crazy with landscaping when you have so much to work with. I don't think I'd ever get anything else done.

 

[j.w]

I would go crazy but DH curbs me. He doesn't want to live in a forest. He likes his wide open spaces :yikesu:

 

[sissy]

ffeel the same way but my yard has all fruit trees mostly sense I'm a veggie I love fruit trees all kinds of them

 

[Shdwdrgn]

My sister and I got an early(ish) start today, and after a bit of struggle with the waterfall, managed to get a pretty flat upper surface finished off. We filled the area in between the barrels and laid back the liner material, but I have to keep the water low on that upper deck until I can finish off sealing the area. The plan is to run one more row of bricks across the top, then do some shorter pieces on either side to hide the barrels a bit.

Since the waterfall was completed to my satisfaction (it actually turned out better than I thought it would), we went ahead and started filling up the pond. In between pulling the wrinkles out of the liner, we drained out the river and dried the rest of the liner material, got it cleaned and prepped, then took a break for lunch.

After lunch, I decided to pull a pump and drop it directly in the big pond to try and pre-clean the water. This gave us our first glimpse of what the waterfall was going to look like. Since we had a nice hot sun working for us, we went ahead and taped the liners together (plus added a second strip of tape downstream while everything was dry), laid it all back out, and started filling again.

...and filling...

...and filling...

Did I mention it took a long time to fill that last foot of water? I didn't think it was ever going to get there. After a couple hours of waiting, I figured the tape seams had probably set up enough, so we went ahead and let it continue filling. Finally the water got high enough to start running down the river, giving all the fish the small pond some much-needed fresh water (the pumps were turned off for at least 4 hours).

After much more filling, I started up the pump in the small pond again, allowing the water to actually start circulating for the fish. A bit later I moved the second pump back to the small pond, so the water is being circulated at full speed throughout the pond now.

Once the water had circulated for awhile and I made sure I wasn't pumping water out somewhere, I decided I was too impatient to wait for the fish to discover for themselves that the river now went somewhere, so I started scooping them up in the net and dropping them half way up the river. It didn't take long for them to go crazy in the new pond, and they were soon chasing each other around, apparently deciding that this new home was good enough to spawn in. Figured I'd better grab out the rest of the plants and give them something to swim around..

I could watch them swim all day, but it was time to get dinner started. After I got food in the oven, I came back out to see the fish were still swimming all over, some were venturing towards the river again, but generally they were obviously in good shape and not stressed by anything in the new water. Once again becoming impatient, I decided to throw caution to the wind and move the large koi, who have not been happy in their cramped little temporary quarters. They didn't seem to resist being herded into a bucket as much this time, and it only took a few minutes to get all three released into the new pond. Each was a bit nervous at first, but as soon as they saw the goldfish swimming around, the koi followed and it wasn't long before they too were exploring the new home.

After dinner everyone got some food, and they seemed to really be enjoying racing around, swimming without running into walls. I saw a couple make small jumps in the middle, some would hang out in the shallows on their own, and others would go down into the depths and then come back up again. Some of the smaller fish also found their way up the river into the big pond. All in all, I have some very happy fish today!

With so much getting done today, I'm way ahead of where I expected to be. This leaves me all day tomorrow to go get large rocks for around the edge of the big pond so I can bring up the height of the liner and get the pond filled those last few inches. Of course I'm also worried about fish jumping out of the water, so the rock edges will help a lot with that. Then I can focus on finishing up the trim around the waterfall, and finally move on to planting in and around the pond. Still a lot of work left to do, but now I can take it slower and give my body a chance to recover.

Whew!