I can hardly wait either Tetley/Joyce! It will be some time before the pond and bog garden are up and running and in the meantime I am praying for it NOT to rain - as our soak away pipe which is not visible in these pictures (house gutter rain water) is now running into the dug out pond rather than a cistern. Pond man says we can run the pipe towards the covered up well (near the trellis) and that the gutter water will find it's way into the well.
We are in a bit of a quandary now. The more we dig in the hole to remove stones, the more stones we find. There is very little soil, just odd bits of stone and larger pieces of granite. You can see them in the pictures above. There has to come a point when we say no more digging or removing stones - then do we cover the bottom and sides with underlay and liner and won't the stones damage the liner in time. We have already filled 3 skips with mostly stone - this is proving to be a bigger job than we envisaged!
All the books and videos showing a pond being dug have perfect soil to dig out - no big boulders or rubble. They say to save the soil to use to build the stream/cascade or bog garden - but what we have in our hole isn't worth keeping as it is full of stone.
Go for a quality felt underlay e.g. Polyfelt, not the flimsy rubbish some places sell.
Why are you planning on installing a pump & filter if this is intended as a wildlife pond? Are you planning on having fish? Do you have a plan for the depth profile of the finished pond - you seem to be going quite a bit deeper than necessary with a limited area of shallower marginal areas.
I was despairing as we have a giant task on our hands, but thanks to the pondkeeper link I feel a little happier, thank you Bob for sending it at my hour of need, and yes Tetley old carpet underlay is at the ready. However, as explained on Bob's link, we have a long way to go yet and then some more. I think the wet weather has made me feel despondent too, watching what little clay type soil we have in the hole being washed down the sides and into the bottom of the pond. Hopefully we will have some dry weather for a few days.
Just because I haven't posted anything new on here for a week or two, we haven't given up ( well almost a couple of times). We have broken the soakaway, and the pipe leading from the cottage roof to the soakaway, found far more stone than we ever anticipated, and said bad words to the hole and to each other. However, we have made some positive progress, the stonemason has been to fit a basic ring around the existing well (the water in the well will be supplying the pond and the new proposed irrigation system). We have also smoothed over the slopping beach area and have managed to borrow an electronic lazer leveller.
The bog garden is the smaller hole in the front of second picture.
You are right aym, that is sad and unimaginative too. We are lucky that we also have a big lawn and a few medium sized ones too - always plenty to do here! We used a lazer leveller today to check on shelf and borders and made a few tweaks to the picture above. Decided to turf around the edges rather than paving slabs which I didn't really want anyway. Hoping that the turf will "take". However that is a long way off yet and we will have Christmas before doing much more to the pond.
All quiet on this project - well not quite. I have been slowly beavering away removing more small stones from the pond - leaving the bigger stones for someone with more strength to remove. The stonemason has been to concrete over the rough stone wall side of the well, we really didn't know which stones to remove (the sharpest edged ones), without the whole well wall falling apart so asked our brilliant stonemason to do this for us.
The liner & pump equipment has been ordered and should be fitted by the end of January, if the weather holds up. In the meantime we still have the stream area to design, preferably before the liner is fitted.
This is proving to be a job and a half - due to the huge amount of stone we have removed - 4 full size skips up to now.
Posts
I can hardly wait either Tetley/Joyce! It will be some time before the pond and bog garden are up and running and in the meantime I am praying for it NOT to rain - as our soak away pipe which is not visible in these pictures (house gutter rain water) is now running into the dug out pond rather than a cistern. Pond man says we can run the pipe towards the covered up well (near the trellis) and that the gutter water will find it's way into the well.
We are in a bit of a quandary now. The more we dig in the hole to remove stones, the more stones we find. There is very little soil, just odd bits of stone and larger pieces of granite. You can see them in the pictures above. There has to come a point when we say no more digging or removing stones - then do we cover the bottom and sides with underlay and liner and won't the stones damage the liner in time. We have already filled 3 skips with mostly stone - this is proving to be a bigger job than we envisaged!
All the books and videos showing a pond being dug have perfect soil to dig out - no big boulders or rubble. They say to save the soil to use to build the stream/cascade or bog garden - but what we have in our hole isn't worth keeping as it is full of stone.
Last edited: 22 November 2016 22:31:04
Don't despair, GD. Others have had similar problems and have overcome them. Hopefully, you'll get some inspiration from these links:
http://www.pondkeeper.co.uk/articles/pond-liner-pond-build-stage-c--smoothing-the-ground.asp
http://www.gardenguides.com/88217-make-pond-rocky-ground.html
Go for a quality felt underlay e.g. Polyfelt, not the flimsy rubbish some places sell.
Why are you planning on installing a pump & filter if this is intended as a wildlife pond? Are you planning on having fish? Do you have a plan for the depth profile of the finished pond - you seem to be going quite a bit deeper than necessary with a limited area of shallower marginal areas.
I was despairing as we have a giant task on our hands, but thanks to the pondkeeper link I feel a little happier, thank you Bob for sending it at my hour of need, and yes Tetley old carpet underlay is at the ready. However, as explained on Bob's link, we have a long way to go yet and then some more. I think the wet weather has made me feel despondent too, watching what little clay type soil we have in the hole being washed down the sides and into the bottom of the pond. Hopefully we will have some dry weather for a few days.
Just because I haven't posted anything new on here for a week or two, we haven't given up ( well almost a couple of times). We have broken the soakaway, and the pipe leading from the cottage roof to the soakaway, found far more stone than we ever anticipated, and said bad words to the hole and to each other. However, we have made some positive progress, the stonemason has been to fit a basic ring around the existing well (the water in the well will be supplying the pond and the new proposed irrigation system). We have also smoothed over the slopping beach area and have managed to borrow an electronic lazer leveller.
The bog garden is the smaller hole in the front of second picture.
Last edited: 02 December 2016 20:51:12
You're making good progress GD.
Looking forward to seeing the finished project.
You are right aym, that is sad and unimaginative too. We are lucky that we also have a big lawn and a few medium sized ones too - always plenty to do here! We used a lazer leveller today to check on shelf and borders and made a few tweaks to the picture above. Decided to turf around the edges rather than paving slabs which I didn't really want anyway. Hoping that the turf will "take". However that is a long way off yet and we will have Christmas before doing much more to the pond.
All quiet on this project - well not quite. I have been slowly beavering away removing more small stones from the pond - leaving the bigger stones for someone with more strength to remove. The stonemason has been to concrete over the rough stone wall side of the well, we really didn't know which stones to remove (the sharpest edged ones), without the whole well wall falling apart so asked our brilliant stonemason to do this for us.
The liner & pump equipment has been ordered and should be fitted by the end of January, if the weather holds up. In the meantime we still have the stream area to design, preferably before the liner is fitted.
This is proving to be a job and a half - due to the huge amount of stone we have removed - 4 full size skips up to now.
Well developed muscles now GD?
It will all be up and running by the summer