Way to enlarge my pond somewhat.. help me think if this would work......

[tinkster]

My pond is to small.. no shock huh... well I have a plan in mind that will help me get back the 3 ft I lost when the critter mawed my liner.

I have no where else I can expand the pond but to the back side where the dock sits out over the pond.  Under the dock is my two submersible pumps sitting in the egg crate DIY filters. The dock and filters are taking up almost 3 ft of my pond and the angle the pumps are down in the pond make it very difficult to get them disconnected and out for cleaning mainteance etc.

What I was thinking is can I go out behind the pond and dig like a 3' x 4' mini pond that would do nothing but house the submersible pumps and then I could move the dock back there to cover them.   I would lift the liner of the existing pond wall and dig out ???? maybe a 12" of the wall  that would let the water flow from the old pond into this new pond.  When I do that what happens to the water level in the old pond.. will it all drop the 12" as I dont want that to happen.   How much should I dig out to let the water over into the pumps so that they never run dry, but I dont want to lower the level of the old pond.

Also I dont have much excess liner from the old pond.. I would have to use a new liner in the new pond.. how would that work?  Would I line the new pond first then run the liner from the old pond over the berm and into the new??   

Then lastly since I dont have much liner left on the old pond, the berm wall between the two could not be very wide as I dont have enuff liner to connect but need enuff berm in there I presume to prevent collapase?? or would that happen since there would be another pond on the other side of the wall with water in it???

Geesh I wish I knew how to explain things well .... any help or ideas what I could do would be great!.. veggie pond or something.???/ anything I could do to get back at least the 3 ft on the pond.

tinkster

[Esther]

How do you plan on attaching the new piece of liner to the old one? I know it has been done but I don't know if I'd trust it. I don't think you can just lay the old liner on top of the new one because you are going to lose water by leaching if not just plain leaking. You're going to have to seal the two pieces together is my opinion.

Although, I have patched mine in a couple of places near the top where it was cut into because of a misunderstanding about what we were doing. I patched another big hole where it layed around an underground sprinkler head and later moved the sprinkler. 

Your water level will be wherever you want it to be if the new pond has the ability to have the water level be up the same as the the big pond. So the top levels of the two areas are going to have to be the same.

You'd better have some sort of float on your pumps or in the new pond seeing that little pond doesn't hold much water or the narrow area gets blocked somehow. It won't take long to empty the little one if something strange happens. Is that new area going to act like a skimmer? It seems like it would pull the surface floating stuff in there.

If your dock is going to be over the pumps, leave a few of the dock boards loose and then put pieces of wood underneath those boards inside of the framework that will keep them from shifting from side to side. You can easily pick them up to get at your pumps etc.

Another thing , when you dig the new part, you are going to have to lower the level of the big pond of course, below the depth of the inlet otherwise the water pressure is going to want to push the liner into the new part.

I don't know, it sounds like, well it sounds, well I wouldn't want to tackle it. But I'm not saying it's impossible.

[enzo]

Preform pond with spillway? Not sure about pricing.

[Esther]

I'm assuming the pumps send the water to a waterfall. I don't remember your pond Tinkster. So how would the liner from the main pond be attached to the proformed and prevent leaching/leaking etc.?

[happyoutsidegirl]

When I built my pond and falls I used 2 seporite pieces of liner. You have to make sure they over lap good. In my case I put the falls liner over the pond liner and sealed it with the sealer kit. Never have had a problem! I too asume the pumps are pumping to the waterfalls? Yes? You would have to have your berm contcting the two low enough for the water to flow into the new pond. I asume you don't want fish in there is the reason for the berm??? You could always use that plastic screening for a separator, but it would have to be cleaned off.Or a plastict crate. and just put plants in it to hide it. Hope I made some since. 

[mcp]

Tink, Great idea to make your pond "bigger " Bigger is always better. I think you could use your smaller pump pond as part of your filtering system. Why not run a bottom drain from main pond into the small pond and use as a settlement pond. If you had room you could also put in a pump vault and use  one external pump instead of 2 submersibles and save some money on electricity also. Just a thought.

[tinkster]

hmm yall ask a great many question I had not given though to. which is what I hoped would happen before I done it and made mistakes.  I  guess it was not such a good idea after all.  I would have to patch the liner I suppose which I dont trust.. also I did not think about the fishies gettin over into the little pond.  so maybe I will go with the external pumps in that hole when my other two go bad.  Guess I will just have to wait..

mcp.. great idea on the externals.. kind of what I had in mind but was gonna do it and use the submersibles till they go out.  dont think I could dig a bottom drain as much as I would love to have one.  wouldnd that mean takin apart all my pond to get to the middle.. I would have to move all the huge rocks I built on top of the liner and then worse than that. dig into my rock hard dirt to dig out plumbing???? not sure I could physically do that now.

tinkster

tinkster

[Julles]

Tinks, I'm expanding my pond, too (next week, hopefully), and your idea was pretty much exactly what I was kicking around for a while.  A SHORT while.  I decided two ponds linked that way wouldn't work well.

From what I've learned on AP, it is possible to seam two liners together.  But it's better to do it when both sections are new and dry and flat on your driveway, not in place in the pond setting, and dirty and on an unlevel surface.  Also, is it John? from Garden Endeavors said there's a good chance tree roots will find the seam and work their way into it, causing a leak.

Also, you have to be sure the water in the shallow pond does not become stagnant, and has a way to flow back and forth into the deep pond.  So your wall between them must be lower than the outer sides of the pond.  Too much engineering, and too weird of acrobatics for the liner.

What's wrong with the pump setup you have now?  Why do you wnat to move them?  Just to make them easier to lift out of the pond?  Then how about raising them up on milk crates.  Fish and water can still flow through, but the pumps would be easier to pull from the pond. 

Take your time, think it through, and make sure you've examined every possible method, before you start to dig.  Oh, and, this time around, I'm hiring guys to do the digging.  Busts my budget, but that's better than busting my back.  Are there some college kids around?  farm workers out of work now that it's winter?

[Julles]

I forgot one important thing... You can NOT take one liner in a higher-up pond and simply drape it down into a lower pond.... Water will get between the two liners and, by dint of "wicking action," will find it's way inbetween the two sheets of rubber - and out of your pond.  Entire ponds have been drained this way. 

[tinkster]

thanks so much julless!! what you are describing is just exacttly what I had pl anned on doing.. I would have wicked the entire pond out

The reason I want the pumps out of the big pond is I am losing 3 ft of good pond to do nothing but store the pumps/filter and then the dock goes out over them to cover them.. so 3 ft is totally lost.. I was just trying to get a small enuff side pond to house nothing but the pumps/filters and to put the dock over so it touched the big pond and looked part of it but didnt take any space out of my big pond

thanks for all the tips!

tinkster

[Esther]

Yup, that is what I said when I warned about the leaching. It wasn't leaking misspelled. LOL

[happyoutsidegirl]

Hi Tink, I draped my falls liner over the pond liner and sealed it once in place just as I was instructed from the co. I bought it from and I have never had a problem! The seal kits are comeplete and easy to use. Or at least what I got is. I even got a big roll of the seal and patch liner for any leakes or ??? shoud arise. TG I still havent had a problem, and it's on 4th full season.You have to over lap quite a bit tho.