the disaster new lilly pond.. turtlemike come fix me hehehe....

[tinkster]

okay so I have all these pretty lilies mike gave me and the promise of more and koi that for some reason start demolishing them soooo I have this 50 x 50 piece of roofing liner left and I decide to make a huge lily pond out of where my swimming pool use to be and it needed to be quick.   I didnt intend to make this pond pretty as far as rocking and berms and plants.. just a place to house lilies for now.

I get this bright idea that I could use the swimming pool liner I savaged last year under the liner to protect it.  This is a massive hole so I laid the pool liner in it to see how much bigger I needed to go.. well as you can see its a mess... well that night it poured the rain and the next day and the next and the next.. so seeing I was not gonna be able to get the water out, I just went on and put the lilies in.  What the picture doesnt show is some of this pond is 4 ft deep, some  just inches.  The dug out dirt in the berms is 2 and 3 ft above the pond and in some places the liner is full of water and other places well not.... .. where do I start to make it right now that I have the lilies in there heheheh.

tink

[sooks]

You are so lucky to have room for another pond! It doesnt seem like there is any problem. This pond has a huge potential to be very beautiful like your other pond!

[mondotomhead]

I can't see any problem either.  You could shovel some of the dirt off the berms and use the dirt to cover the bright blue (!) swimming pool liner.   And the different water levels would work out fine for the lillies, hyacyinth's and any extra marginals.  Look on the bright side.  You won't have to use the hose to fill it.  FREE WATER

[tinkster]

no no no... your not following hehehehe.. only a tiny bit of the pond is lily dept. Maybe 1/3 of it or so. I need to be able to shift and pull the liner over somehow so that I can fill it even fuller.  Then parts of it would be 6 ft deep or so perfect for my koi when they outgrown my other pond and then the rest of the pond would be 2 ft deep or so.  then I could use it all for lilies which is what I want.

tink

[Ky Kim]

Can you just take a pump and suck the water out, then dig it out more?  Hate to loose all the free water, but its the only thought that comes to mind right now.

[Julles]

Well, if the pond is below grade, you're going to have to raise the edges, so run-off doesn't get into it in the future.  Fertilizer and weed killer and all that.   :

So get some concrete blocks or something and build a berm along the edges, and run the blue liner up over the blocks. 

Then get some attractive rocks to cover the liner.  Lily pond or not, it DOES need to be pretty - at least, not bright BLUE.   




(

[bunny56lbc]

I used RR tyes to build up my koi pond  , to make it deeper.

bonnie

[PondmaninAL]

Give it time, that bright blue will be a nice shade of green.

[Ky Kim]

Looks like a mini mike pond in the making to me   

[turtlemike]

   OK Tink, what I see in your pics is a beautiful spot for a linerless mud pond.
  What I would do is figure out where to put your water plants while you drain out the pond with a syphon.  It looks like you have some land that is way below water level below the pond that the syphon could run to.
   It looks like your soil is ideal for packing and would be water tight.
  If I was there with my tractor and blade I could build a beautiful pond there in an afternoon or less.  I built a pond bigger than that for a neighbor once and it took about an hour, but it was a simple round pond on flat ground and all I had to do was drive around in circles with no backing up or anything.
  The problem is that I'm not there with my tractor and blade, and if I was I wouldn't have time to do it because of all of the work I'm drowning in. I have a friend with a car hauler truck that would haul my equipment over there but I have no idea what he would charge to haul it there and back.
  The idea occurs to me that if you had enough free time to work for me, enough for me to get ahead of the tidal wave of sprouting seeds and plants that need planted and divided and fence that needs to be moved to keep deer out of the vegetable garden and ripening pods that need to be bagged and bags of ripe seeds that need to be brought in and washed and bottled and labeled and recorded and pools that need water change and clean out and shade cloth support built for seedling pools.    You get the idea. Then maybe we could trade work for work. That's if you could afford the hauling cost.
   Another idea is to leave things as they are until I get ahead of the big wave of things I have to do, like Sept or Oct and you could pay me to come out and build it  you could somehow put your plants somewhere during construction and refill.
  What is it like to the right of the pic where it turns into brush. Does it stay kind of level or drop over a hill and get steeper or what.  Because I think I see enough room for twice as big a pond as you have there. Also what's to the left in the pic?
  One more thing, did you dig that by hand ?

[tinkster]

mike.. theres room there for 4 to 5 times the size of pond that is there now.. To the right probably 20 ft awaay is a row of railroad ties as a wall before a drop off of about 6 ft.  At the bottom of the drop off/railroad ties, is my chain link fence and all my blackberries.  That whole acres was on a incline but I had leveled that part you see for a swimming pool.  Part of the deck is still there above. Tthe upper side of the pond about another 10 ft is a retaining wall made of cinder blocks.  part of it is 8ft tall or so that gradually works down to level.  So if you can pictre a acre that had a slope and to get a pool I brought in a dozer and level that part out.. so it made a very high wall on the top side and the big fall off you see on the bottom side. hope that helps you figure out what I should do hehehe.. maybe cover it all in and forget it!

  I was not through digging but just put that pool liner in to see where I needed to get bigger then it started raining and raining and the next thing I knew it was full the koi were killing the lillies so I tossed it in there.. I had planned on using the black roofing liner.  I would love to trade work for work.  I keep hoping I will ge tback up there really soon to help and get more lilies but things just keep happening here. and yes.. That is dug by hand. ohhhhh but my father does have a backhoe.  I would just have to take down the chain link fence to get it in.

tink

[turtlemike]

The dozer explains how the limestone rocks got mixed in with the dirt.
  My general rule of thumb is to never build a pond smaller or shallower than a site will allow.
  The bigger and deeper a pond is the better the water will be.
   Is that your land past the pond and small trees in the first pic ? If so then you have room for a very nice big pond. 
   I would have to see it in person to tell how big it could be but I bet your dad and I could build one pretty quickly.
   I sure wouldn't fill it in. And I wouldn't worry about the wasted work of digging what you have already done, I would just try to get the best job done for the site that you can. You can have a REALY nice pond like mine there If it's done right, and I would not cut corners and diminish quality or size or you will regret it later.  This is your first best easiest chance to get it right and if you do you wont regret it.
  Walking the site is a must, and I can design and build it by eye without any survey or staking.
  Are you near the top of the hill or near the bottom, or somewhere in between ?  this determines soil characteristics.

[tracey_shafer]

Tink you really don't want to put koi in with your lilys. Sooner or later they are going to destroy them. Koi are really not a good fish for a water garden, they also get way too big.