South Texas Backyard Oasis

[michey1st]

LOVE your narrative! Your pond is coming along beautifully and quickly! I feel like such a slacker since we are a month in and aren't finished yet, lol!

One tip I have: we bought this cheapie water flow meter to measure exactly how much water we put in to the pond: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0058EOC5M (I have amazon prime for free shipping but you can likely find it elsewhere as well.) Works great for the initial fill but also for topping off.

Can't wait to see your oasis evolve!

 

[haver79]

Enjoying seeing the build. Looking great. Looking forward to more pics as you progress.

 

[Tula]

Fun to watch and read your narrative....you're really making progress!!

 

[DrellDrell]

Agreed...fun to watch your progress. I am nowhere near an expert on ponds - just built mine last month. I placed my skimmer filter, which is made by another manufacturer yet similar to yours, on the opposite side of the waterfall. I figured this would create more of a natural flow of water to the skimmer to keep surface materials going toward the skimmer. Hoping this also create more water movement overall. Your Day 2 post seems to show the hole for the skimmer in a good location.

I am curious as to how you will create a berm to prevent water overflowing toward your house. As we were digging our pond, we decided to make the berm much taller than originally planned. I created enough space for the pond to take on up to 3" of rain. But, not overflow yet.

Also, one tip that I received was to create a 4"x4" coping shelf around the permitter of the pond. After laying the liner in the hole will 2' of overhang, this 4"x4" coping shelf allowed me to add 3-4" stones across the perimeter that do a good job of hiding the liner. You can see it on one side of my pond in the attached pics. The coping shelf is across the entire perimeter, except by the waterfall opening and skimmer opening.

 

[Lisak1]

one tip that I received was to create a 4"x4"

Just to add on to this tip - your top shelf dimensions should be adjusted to the size stone you plan to use. We used large (two man) boulders around the perimeter of our pond,so our shelf is much wider than 4 inches.

 

[rrasco]

One tip I have: we bought this cheapie water flow meter to measure exactly how much water we put in to the pond: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0058EOC5M (I have amazon prime for free shipping but you can likely find it elsewhere as well.) Works great for the initial fill but also for topping off.

Good tip. I have Amazon Prime too so I may order one of those. My liner won't be here for a week so I have some time.

I am curious as to how you will create a berm to prevent water overflowing toward your house. As we were digging our pond, we decided to make the berm much taller than originally planned. I created enough space for the pond to take on up to 3" of rain. But, not overflow yet.

I'm not exactly sure. Playing that one by ear. I already started building it up a little bit, but I really don't want to transition from patio to a berm, so I'm kicking around some options. I have not even decided on a stone yet, so lots to figure out before I'm done. I will be putting gutters on that side of the house to keep any run off out of the pond from the roof at least. Maybe I will create some kind of "drain" that will divert water away from the house in case of an overflow. It usually doesn't rain much here, but this year has been the exception. Really hard to judge where the runoff goes in a normal rain since we've had so much already. Everything just floods now.

 

[sissy]

you can check out ponddigger on you tube he has great info on skimmers

 

[rrasco]

Thanks. I've been watching a lot of his videos but have not seen that one yet.

 

[sissy]

He has all whole thing on there from tear down to install .

 

[rrasco]

My impatience is rivaled by Mother Nature alone

This weekend I pondered over the weather reports that said chance of thunderstorms. Heaven knows we've already had enough rain for now, but you can't argue with a meteorologist. On my way back from the DMV at lunch today (which was a blast BTW, I can't wait to go back) I saw the recognizable droplets hit my windshield as a storm system formed above. It does this all the time and then the sun comes out, after all, this is Texas. If you don't like the weather, wait ten minutes. Approaching my office, it's a straight road and you can clearly see miles down it. I'm at one end, the light across the intersection from me red. I can see down the road and it's clear what it is. Rain. No rain over me yet, but it was windy. Very. I thought to myself, "I bet it will rain as soon as I get into the parking lot." The light turns green, I head towards my anxiously awaited lunch and take a right into the office lot. I wasn't wrong. The rain began. For about an hour I was sure a tornado was on its way, but the only emergency message received was for a flash flood. Like we didn't see that one coming. By this point we just assume that's the case with any shower. This time though, it rained for more than 10 minutes, 90 maybe. When I left the office the sun was shining.

Of course, I couldn't help but think what this was doing to my freshly sculpted crater that I fully intended to fill with water, albeit not today. I knew it would level out some of the soil I spread around, that's actually a good thing in some aspects. What I didn't expect was to have a full pond before I even had a liner. I can only attribute this to saturated soil. At least I know I'm on the right track to a level pond!

I am slightly concerned what all that water is doing to my shelves. It's mostly undisturbed earth and clay, so it holds shapes fairly well.

 

[addy1]

Hey a koi mud pond! way to go! nice and level too

 

[CountryEscape]

Amazing level. My pond sure wasn't ...

 

[rrasco]

The funny thing is I have not really had a chance to level it yet. I built up the side by the fence a little yesterday, that's why the blocks are moved I was raising it up about an 3/4-1". The rain just made it all "melt" together. I'm not complaining.

 

[rrasco]

Days 3, 4 and 5

Luckily with the holiday I was able to take advantage of the three day weekend. Started with digging out the bog since the soil was finally dry enough to work with. While I dug the bog, I got tired of waiting for the pond to drain itself--it had only gone down a few inches--so I threw a pump in there and got most of the water out. This soil was not as nearly as easy to dig as the main pond was, much clumpier and harder to craft. I filled the blocks and began building up the berm on the outside of the bog with the extracted soil.

Before I got any further on the construction I needed to address my tree that I never really finished pruning. I wanted to get a little more light to the pond, while also reducing the amount of leaves and twigs that would undoubtedly wind up in there. I needed to get this done before the pond got any further for fear of damaging the liner, etc once it was completed.

I was determined to make more progress after I finished digging the bog so I went on a supply run for some caps and mortar. I was only able to get a few in place before I ran out of light and had to call it quits. I picked right up the next morning and got it done though.

 

[CountryEscape]

Doing a great job! Man I love watching someone else's pond build. Funny how looking at your dirt, I would guess it would have been super easy to dig .... but it's very deceiving, most of the time.