***The Pond Discussion Thread****

[NickK]

Got a 0.8 ton Kubuto coming Monday late. Finally can get some proper progress done.

So on the list...

Digging <- I am here.
Paint fence behind whilst it's easy..
Weather cover (also joins the fence posts for strength temporarily).
Joining and plumbing - including pressure test with water and air. This includes drain and water run.
Rebar
Concrete Formers
Concrete slab pour & smooth
Electrician to extend a line out to the garage.
Blockwork includes cutting angles..
Fibreglass & topcoat
Render & coping stones
Fit window (2.2m x 70cm)
Make airlifts.
Wash and fill.
Move filtration and fish
Remove temporary weather shelter
Finish top cover for anoxic filter
Make anoxic filter baskets.

 

[NickK]

Out the blue - my bottom drain, 2” and 1” piping was delivered along with the skimmer which unfortunately has a massive crack down one side so needs to be returned.

The 110mm piping arrives today too.

I need to get some 1m panels for wall reinforcement plus some timber to join the fence posts together to support them.

 

[NickK]

First day digging. Removed a tree, re-homed a shrub, dug 1.2m down for the anoxic filter. Also took delivery of the 110mm pipe but got elbow 90s instead of short radius bends.. so will need to sort that out. The skimmer will be picked up and new one sent

Need to sort out the levels. Mark out the floor and get wood to support the walls as it seems all sand so will quickly erode in rain :/

 

[NickK]

Day two was spent fishing... I've not fished since last year.. flat calm on the solent with glorious sunshine.

Day three yesterday - started to widen the hole. Popped to get some timber. The remainder of the day was taken removing a telescope pier I made years ago with concrete and rebar. The concrete mix and rebar meant the digger couldn't dent it or topple it. So I had to manually go in with a set of SDS drills, SDS chisels to under cut until it was sat only on the 4 pieces of rebar. Then get an angle grinder out and topple it. The post weighs so much I can roll it but not drag it unless I use the digger!

Today's task is first to make a support for the excavation walls now they're 1.2m deep. The ground is sand and we're due a deluge of rain tomorrow. I'll also build a roof for a tarp. It should help minimise the rain ingress and help keep the site drier for the blockwork and fibreglassing down the road. I will also dig out the remainder of the pond.
I also need to arrange for the collection of the damaged skimmer - they will build a new one.
Also the 110mm fittings arrived and they're elbows - not short radius bends. So +£150, they'll collect them and order short radius ones no problem. Hopefully they will arrive next week.

I may change the design a little as I think I'm a little too close to the garage foundations given the sandy soil. The normal thing is you take a 45 degree down line from the bottom of a foundation - that's the danger zone below this in terms of slippage and movement. I'll be digging under the garage door/slab so I don't want to weaken the garage corner any more than I need to.

 

[NickK]

The digger went back today - I've filled overfilled 9 one-ton bags. 8 yard skip arrives on Friday and for two weeks I'll be moving the soil into the skip. That should take 6 or 7 bags of spoil given the skip has an 8 ton limit. I found a minor complication - I found the rodding eye of the drain slap band where my wall will be, so I will need to make adjustments to that but I will manually need to dig the pipe out to cut'n'shut the eye. It also saves me from laying a drainage channel

Here's a panorama - the sheet of board are 1.2m long:




I now have most of the majority of the piping. So once the first skip load is out, I will have some room in the garden for digging again.

 

[Street]

That's going to be huge! Good to see some progress on it.

I had the heron visit last week. I went out in the morning and noticed my fish were hiding at the bottom and not coming up for food. I did a count and realised one of the fish was missing so I figured the heron must have been. Stupidly I'd bought a net to go over a couple weeks ago but hadn't got around to putting it on yet. At least I only lost one fish. It could have been a lot worse.

 

[NickK]

The replacement skimmer arrived today.. but it's 3" not 4" piping.. Doh! so that one is going back and they're sending out a 4" version.. Will order the XP80 pump at some point soon. Also need the rebar mesh for the concrete base and two small meshes against the fence spurs to spread any force they apply to the blockwork.

Repainting the bathroom today and tomorrow whilst it's too hot outside.

 

[Ninco!]

I'm getting pond envy, though I think I'm getting pretty good bang per buck from the ten minutes it took to bury this washing up bowl and lob some rocks in a couple of months ago. I may even invest another ten minutes putting some gravel round the edges... eventually. Rome wasn't built in a day. We have a hedgehog that regularly drinks from it too.

I know when people fill in their ponds, the sad thing is that local Toads/Frogs are a bit lost as they still return - My parents bought a house and the Pond was awful, filled it in and felt really bad as it was hub for local wildlife - so built another. By god they are hard work to dig.

Never would I have thought a simple washing up bowl would prove popular. We leave little bowls of water here on the garden, go for a walk at night and local Hedgehog is using.

The trouble is a massive fat boy wood pigeon will spot and have a bath = bowl is empty.

 

[NickK]

So it looks like I need to hire a road plate for the skip lorry to pass over a couple of manhole covers safely (18t of truck loaded I think). An 8 yard skip has a limit of 8t so will have to see about a second if needed... Will be glad to get rid of the first load of soil.

Also annoyingly the tyre on my wheelbarrow has deflated.. so ordered a non-puncturable one. Started moving the soil by bucket initially - will sort out a couple of 2m planks I have for taking a wheelbarrow and bobs your uncle for tipping into the skip

 

[NickK]

Update - I've emptied three 1 tonne bags, plus 1/2 another and taken the surface sand/overflow - probably about 4 bags total into skip. I manage about 30-45 minutes of moving at about 8am when it's about 20 degC then leave it.. by the time it's after noon it's up to 30degC so not the temperature I want to start shovelling in.. I've also found that I get an hour or two of shaded hole time too - so I could use that to shape/level out the hole.

Skip wise - there's a couple of bags of space and some more perhaps.. so a 1/2 bag a day seems to be doing the job. Just thinking there's probably another 1/2 a skip remaining once this skip has gone.

 

[NickK]

After being let down by the local place.. I now have two road plates being delivered on Thursday Only down side.. £75 each way delivery/collection yep... £150... however this is cheaper than replacing a manhole cover and they will place them using an arm. The next skip will be more planned so I'll have chance to ring around more local places for delivery..

I may have to put some sand down as the 1.5t manhole cover stands a little proud on one side of the it. That way the pressure shouldn't push the rim down an break the surround.

In other news ... my 110mm short radius bends turned up so I just need some cleaner and solve glue (plus a bit of drainage pipe for the rodding eye changes etc) for the sub-ground plumbing. However I don't want those out in the sun at the moment to minimise UV impact - once the mess is cleared I can start trenching and laying the piping before all the pour.

 

[NickK]

Got Flow Bro?

The 110mm short radius bends arrived yesterday. So we're doing well on the plumbing readiness. It brings it home when you think - there's two of this sized pipes coming out of the pond going to the filters then two to the anoxic chamber and two airlift returns of this size. However unlike pumped systems - it will essentially be gravity fed right through to the airlifts.


The capacity plan:


The aerated bottom drain:


The surface skimmer:



Estimated max flow rate of the design is 30-36,000 litres per hour for 58W of power. That's based on the flow rate of about 15-18,000lph through each pipe. The realistic max rate is limited by the current drum filter to about 12,000lph (max 16,000 stated). The pond size designed was 11,777 litres with 1300 litre chamber to the side - although finished I suspect it's probably be a bit less. Anything over 10,000 litres is good - so it's capable at the moment of running 1x per hour turn over. Given the current pond is run at 6000lph for 1500-1700 litre pond is around 3-4x per hour. I like to run a faster rate so that waste is kept moving and taken out by the filter quickly.

In future I may add a far larger second DIY drum with a finer mesh (20 micron - 1.2m x 1.0 m mesh to keep up with the flow rate!) and then switch the current drum from 58 microns to a larger micron size - increasing the flow rate overall. By that time the annoxic chamber should be online and mature enough that the bio (20,000lph capacity) can be taken out of the system. Leaving mechanical filtration down to below 20 microns (bio film and scale reduces this further) and the anoxic chamber to convert the ammonia etc to nitrogen gas.
I may add a protein skimmer and a ozone system rather than a UV system to kill off bugs.

 

[NickK]

Bag down!

So four 1-tonne bags piled high with additional around the edges of the hole looks like we're getting close to maximum skip capacity (smoothed off the indent on the lower lip. I have 1/2-3/4 full bag that I can use to make up the space.



To go - I still have 2 over filled bags plus another bag's worth of dirt around the edge and probably another in the hole once the shaping/levelling has finished.
I have two other bags I'll keep to fill in the old pond once the fish are moved across.

Skip lorry on Friday so fingers crossed it's under the weight limit.

 

[NickK]

Road plates down yesterday.. ready for the skip lorry today.

 

[nst68]

Are waterproof (underwater) flexible LED strips a thing?

 

[NickK]

Are waterproof (underwater) flexible LED strips a thing?

You can add them.. but when I quizzed those that have tried lights in the water etc - they use lights above (easier to change, no buildup of algae etc).

I'm considering detachable lights so for special occasions I can pop them in the pond and then take them out.

Edit: Saturday... turned up at 8am to take the skip They guy said it could have taken a little more soil without a problem and showed me the limits. Road plates worked really well.

 

[NickK]

Slow going - I had a week of rain and then a week in France and now 14d of quarantine.

Lots of soil out in the deepening process. The bottom where ladder ends is at the correct depth - the rest of the pond is being deepened to that. It's a bit chicken and egg - I don't want to cut the sides out without having too much time/rain/wind between then and the slab pour then it's onto the block work. The base is 25cm - hence the additional depth below - this is would be too deep for the excavator.. hence the manual work.



This weekend will be a good digging session I think, regardless of the weather otherwise it will drag on. I can then order a new 8t skip and have the delivery next weekend after quarantine. Then it's simply a case of filling the skip with soil.

At that stage I should have the layout done enough to start fitting the piping (need to dig trenches too). I need to order the 4" valves so when the plumbing is fitted, the valves have the correct spacings to be operated and the plumbing will need pressure testing for a day or two once it's glued - no point in laying a slab if the pipes leak!

After that it's going to feel like more of a home run turning point - getting the slab down and the starting the blocks will make it feel like a proper project. At least at that point the soil will be supported by the blockwork.

We're September now - so if I can get the concrete laid and the blockwork started before it gets too cold, I can keep going on the blocks until the temps drop too much. I'll be able to put a tarp over it as I build the blocks too. I'm lucky that the water table is far lower than the base.

The next temperature sensitive step will be the fibreglassing and top coat and that may have to wait until next year. I have the complexity of the rear chamber being very narrow and having to fibreglass in sections over a period. Then it's a simple home run with glass and the outside, by that time the plumbing is already in, so it's then connecting things up.

Building a pond (especially below ground) is a marathon rather than a sprint.

 

[kindai]

From experience its easier to use the digger and make yourself a ramp down then fill the ramp in rather than to do it by hand Depends how much room you have mind.

 

[NickK]

From experience its easier to use the digger and make yourself a ramp down then fill the ramp in rather than to do it by hand Depends how much room you have mind.

Not enough - it's either hole, dirt or space where the digger would be. Logistics are tighter than I thought, hence all the annoying crap.

 

[NickK]

The drum filter is back online after I managed to break the PVC coupling on the spray water supply. Only taken about three weeks. I'd opened the bypass into the bio filter for the duration, so stirring up the bio filter and the mess in the pond resulted in 1 minute between washes. I gave the drum it's first Karcher wash, the average time has changed from 15 minutes to 55-77 minutes as it cleared the bio film build up from the last 6 months of operation.

The pond is clear as a bell again. No progress on digging - I managed to burst a blood vessel in my eye, so I look like a Zombie at the moment so I can't really do physical activity.