A Step-By-Step Guide On Building A Pond
Apr 19th 2024
An addition of a pond in your garden is an ingenious way of transforming your home into a living paradise. As expected, building a pond is thorough and if you are someone who wants to design it by yourself, here is the step-by-step process broken it down for you:
Step 1: Mark Area
After deciding which part of your backyard or garden to build your pond, use any gear you have that is able to assist you in visualizing the shape of your pond and mark the outline of your pond. If you’re building an ecosystem pond instead of a simple water garden, make sure it is large – to house living space for fishes. Outline your desired pond and the waterfall with marking paint. One tip: make sure the curves of your pond are wide.
Step 2: Position Skimmer, Waterfall Filter & Pipe
Put the waterfall filter at where you marked it, and the skimmer at the opposite end. Next, lay your tubing from the waterfall filter to the skimmer. Get ready your adapters as well as cement to connect the tubing.
Step 3: Pond Area Excavation
Finally, it is time for some hardcore garden work. Start digging about 6-8” deep, then build a plant shelf and then a retaining wall by using the dirt. Once you excavate your pond area, mark another outline deeper in your pond, around 2’ deep. The area you outlined will be full of rocks, so the same thing as when you first outlined your pond: wide curves. The last area to excavate is for the skimmer box.
Step 4: Skimmer And Pump
Before installing the skimmer, pack down and level the soil. Afterwards, place the tubing and the check valve assembly into the skimmer through the grommet and the pump respectively. Thirdly, attach the tubing and check valve together. Lastly, connect the overflow pipe to the back of the skimmer, while ensuring the overflow hole is above water level.
Once it is set up, attach a bulkhead that is leak-proof to the overflow hole and use a male adapter to connect your tubing to a drainage ditch.
Step 5: Underlayment And Liner
Underlayment is a thin layer of cushioning that can provide insulation against heat and moisture. Lay underlayment starting from the middle and make sure you go all the way to the corners of your pond excavated area. After the underlayment, lay the liner in the same way.
Step 6: Connect Liner to Skimmer
Next step is to connect the liner to the skimmer with a faceplate. Secondly, make two holes for the two bolts using a nail. Removing the liner, place silicone over the holes and then attach the liner and the faceplate again. Install and tighten the remaining bolts.
Step 7: Add Boulders
Boulders are placed starting from the vertical walls of your pond. After the large boulders are placed, fill the pond’s bottom surface with smaller boulder and rocks.
Step 8: Attach Liner To Waterfall Box
The waterfall box has to be straight horizontally and vertically one-inch slanted forward. Position the liner in front of the waterfall box and mark the top bolts on opposite sides, take out the liner and then apply silicone bead over the holes then place the liner back. Using the bolts, reattach the waterfall wire. Ensure everything is secure before trimming the liner.
Step 9: Add Plants
Put bog plants on the plant shelves and water lilies at the bottom. Fill the pond with water!
Step 10: Add Waterfall Foam
Every drop of water from your waterfall comes from the pump unlike natural waterfalls. Hence, it is crucial to make the limited amount of water you have to cascade down gently and beautifully – just like a waterfall. Waterfall foam will help to fill in gaps between rocks and when they are all filled up, water is being brought back to the top of the rock, flowing down again and again.
With that, you are almost done building your pond! You can add any finishing touches as you like – gravel, lights, and to get your pond ready for fishes, remember to add water treatments into your pond so it is fish ready. If all the above steps sound too hard and challenging for you, you can always ask Fitz’s Fish Ponds to do the job for you.
