Sick to death of hills and slopes!

[michey1st]

I am completely, totally, mentally exhausted thinking about my back yard and this dang pond. I want to go bigger, I have the liner to go bigger, but every scenario I come up with just doesn't seem to pan out. Where my pond is, there's a "gentle" slope... about an 18 inch drop over around 9 feet, that goes down away from the house. That is before you get to the steep downward 45 degree hill that is the back 40 feet of my property and kind of unusable (for now). Our yard is not huge ... just shy of 1/4 acre and that includes aforementioned hills and such. I adore our location backing to a forest, and I adore my house, but I do not adore my slope(s).

The net of it is that in order to keep my water level even or above-grade on the high side, I need around a 2 foot berm on the low side. Digging in to the high side more doesn't accomplish much aesthetically unless we also raise the berm. I have room to expand maybe a foot in any direction, but all options futz with the berm height, (oh, and we are both kind of sick of digging to boot, lol).

I keep telling myself we will plan for something bigger later, but this dang yard is very discouraging, because I don't know how we CAN make it measurably bigger without building honest-to-goodness retaining walls or having a berm that ends up eating up half of the remaining yard space. I could completely dismantle the middle pond and absorb all that space in to one larger pond with a waterfall on the high side, but that undoes a ton of hard work we've already put in over the years, and i'm quite happy with the aesthetic of our bog and middle pond. Still haven't ruled that option out, though.

Not really looking for a solution (yet) just wanted to take some time to vent. And to say that all of you ponders with level yards, or gentle slopes facing towards your house, are so so so lucky, from a ponding perspective at least.

Can't a girl get a little flatness over here?!?!?!? I think I need a support group.

 

[addy1]

Can't a girl get a little flatness over here?!?!?!? I think I need a support group.

lmao, most don't want FLATNESS!

Our slope is darn steep, no real way to work around it without a berm or build a nice well supported wall. You could just make it bigger going out sideways. Make it deeper, that too would add gallons.
I used to get out of breath just walking up the hill, done it enough now to be well conditioned!

The pond ended up a little further down then where it is drawn in the only less sloped area we had.

 

[michey1st]

lmao, most don't want FLATNESS!

The grass is always greener.... LOL! I used to hate my curls, and not a day went by where I didn't wish for straight hair. Then, I learned not to fight them and I LOVE them now. I'm sure this pond will be the same way... it's just a challenge getting there.

I don't like stepping outside and seeing the chaos of a construction zone. I want it to just finish! But it's a toss-up. Finish it quickly be sort-of-happy with it because it is an improvement, and enjoy it for a year or two, then rip it out to improve. Or drain it, spend another few days making it a little bigger, then finish it, enjoy it for maybe 2 or 3 years, and rip it out to improve.

In either case, i'm sure I will learn something about this new pond that will help improve version 3.0. Kinda leaning towards Option 1, but ask me again in an hour.....

*sigh*

 

[addy1]

. Or drain it, spend another few days making it a little bigger, then finish it, enjoy it for maybe 2 or 3 years, and rip it out to improve.

I go for option #2

I worked on mine for around 6 months, the next year it started being my pond. I have not changed the original pond or stream, like the way they turned out, but have added more ponds.

 

[sissy]

It is a never win sorry to say when you have a pond you are always changing something .It just comes with the territory of being addicted to ponding .I think ponding is harder than buying and decorating a whole house from start .I learned that when I retired to VA and gave all my furniture away in NJ .GEEZE I even thinking it is harder than landscaping 3 acres .It never ends but each time you change something it makes you smile and say I like it and then 2 years later you do it again .Addiction is hard

 

[michey1st]

Whelp, I had a heart to heart with the hubs and laid out our options... go with what we have and upgrade in a year or two, or empty out and make it bigger to tide me over for longer (lol). He knows me and frankly, I think he just didn't want to hear me complain for the next year ;-) Sooooooo, he agreed with you, Addy! Option 2 it is!

So, we spent the day emptying (such a waste of water *cry*) and digging a little bit bigger! We are halfway done (with the really tedious part already complete). We pumped out the pond, shifted the liner and underlayment to one side, got rid of the nicely leveled shelf (basically, gave us 6 more inches in width at the top, and about of foot of extra width at the bottom by giving it less of a slant) and expanded towards the middle pond about 2 feet x 1 foot. When we were done, we folded back the underlayment and liner and did a rough placement to cover our work and protect it from any rain.

Tomorrow, we will fold the underlay and liner the other way and work on the other side -- getting rid of that 6 inch berm, lessening the slant at the bottom and redoing the "walk-in" landing.

I hesitate to use any online calculators to figure out an approximate of where we are in volume, because I don't want to be disappointed with what we *actually* end up with. BUT... i'm THRILLED with what we managed to accomplish today! digging out the extra part towards the middle pond really made it feel a ton roomier -- I think my fishies will approve (at least, they better)!

Thanks for listening to me gripe, peeps! And thank you for the pics, Addy! Very encouraging =D

 

[addy1]

Glad to help you get involved in more work!

If it was mine I would have done the same, just done it, as much as a pita as it would be. My honey would have said , have a good time digging! But then again I do have a tractor he has yet to use, which dug the first pond and all following ponds.

 

[michey1st]

Oh, how I envy your tractor! A couple of times we thought about going to Home Depot to pick up a few day laborers, but meh. This way, we can take all the credit when it's awesome ;-)

 

[addy1]

With our rocks here, mush shale rocks, I would still be digging it, if doing by hand. I use the back hoe to even put in plants the shale is so bad.

 

[michey1st]

We've got some of those mushy rocks too! I see them in the ground and I get all excited, then once you pull them out they give up and crumple and you're left with a bunch of soil and MAYBE a pebble in the middle >.< Luckily, we did find some good "dragon eggs" as we were digging. We use the larger ones to edge flower beds and have been collecting the medium sized ones to maybe use as rip-rap on our slope. The useless tiny ones get returned to the forest to rock on!

 

[addy1]

My honey told me when I carefully sorted out a huge pile of those "rocks" to use in the pond construction they were no good, he thought . but me being me thought they sure looked like good rocks.

This is one pile, I was so proud of saving money..............within a few months they were dirt.



I do find hard white quartz now and then, get so excited to find a good rock!

 

[CBP]

Whelp, I had a heart to heart with the hubs and laid out our options... go with what we have and upgrade in a year or two, or empty out and make it bigger to tide me over for longer (lol). He knows me and frankly, I think he just didn't want to hear me complain for the next year ;-) Sooooooo, he agreed with you, Addy! Option 2 it is!

So, we spent the day emptying (such a waste of water *cry*) and digging a little bit bigger! We are halfway done (with the really tedious part already complete). We pumped out the pond, shifted the liner and underlayment to one side, got rid of the nicely leveled shelf (basically, gave us 6 more inches in width at the top, and about of foot of extra width at the bottom by giving it less of a slant) and expanded towards the middle pond about 2 feet x 1 foot. When we were done, we folded back the underlayment and liner and did a rough placement to cover our work and protect it from any rain.

Tomorrow, we will fold the underlay and liner the other way and work on the other side -- getting rid of that 6 inch berm, lessening the slant at the bottom and redoing the "walk-in" landing.

I hesitate to use any online calculators to figure out an approximate of where we are in volume, because I don't want to be disappointed with what we *actually* end up with. BUT... i'm THRILLED with what we managed to accomplish today! digging out the extra part towards the middle pond really made it feel a ton roomier -- I think my fishies will approve (at least, they better)!

Thanks for listening to me gripe, peeps! And thank you for the pics, Addy! Very encouraging =D

***This thread needs PICS !****

 

[michey1st]

***This thread needs PICS !****

Not really any in-progress pics to share, but I do have a crappy "before the redo" pic and an after the redo pic!

Before: We were in a rush and weren't paying attention to checking measurements. Width ended up being 7 feet at the deepest point (instead of the 8 feet I was gunning for) due to not digging out the base too much and keeping too much curve in the walls and I had cut in a niche for a DIY skimmer that I realized after the fact was a tremendous waste of space. When filled to the this point (which is the ledge that will hold border rocks, total came to 500 gallons):

And the after. Got rid of the niche, elongated that side towards our middle pond, dug out the rock ledge all around and straightened up the sides. Also redid the walk-in stairs to take up less volume. The waterline right now is the NEW rock ledge (which is about 3 inches higher than the old. All told, we doubled the volume and are sitting at 1000 gallons so far. Planning to add 2-3 courses of stacked stone around the perimeter and bringing up the water another 3 or so inches to completely hide the liner. So, i'm estimating around 1200 gallons when all is said and done.

For a size comparison, the lilies are in the same size pot in both pictures. The biggest difference is the extra space towards the middle pond and the tweaked stairs. It completely opened things up and makes it feel MUCH roomier!