Building a Pond

[Weather1]

I just bought a new house, and I want to build a pond in my yard / garden.

Does anyone have experience builing one?

Is it better to use a plastic prefab liner or dig one and use the other type of liner?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Any pictures would be great also

Thanks in advance

[vanderkm]

We built ours using the pond liners and they work great as long as you can live with the limited choice of sizes and shapes. My only advice would be to make it way bigger than you think you want it, because you will likely want to expand it next season. They are really fun to have especially if you add goldfish - just the cheap feeder goldfish do great and grow really large - just have to plan for how you are going to overwinter them. Sorry, no photos - ours are pretty basic - a plastic prefab liner in the ground surrounded by rocks with fish and a few floating plants.

mary v.

[Scales Zoo]

A friend dug the pond in the backyard, then lined it with plastic, the heavy stuff from building supply store. Then she put down sand in the bottom, and laid chicken wire on that. She put in enough pea gravel to fill in the spaces between the wire and the sand, and used a type of concrete premix that is rubberized so it would be flexible without cracking in the spring when the ground heaves. All they used was a submersible pump and filter, and a heater for a livestock water trough when the weather got cold.

[Mr.Lizard]

I've done both. The easiest is the prefab and they're pretty durable too. However if you want to get creative your imagination is the limit if you use a liner----they're pricey though.
The pre-fabs have nice sturdy shelves if you're going to put a pump in.
I've been real lazy so far as posting any pictures yet but I'll get some posted soon of my ponds and pets too.
BTW,it's been my experience that within a week you'll attract a pond frog that'll adopt your pond as it's new home.

[Jeff Hathaway]

I've built a fair number of ponds, since that was my job, and then my business, for several years:-)

Prefab shells vs. EPDM liners- both have advantages. It depends on what you want to achieve with the pond. Here are some questions you need to ask yourself:

-do I want to keep fish in it?
-do I want to keep said fish in it overwinter?
-do I want to keep turtles in it?
-what size would I like?

If you can answer these questions, I can be of more help to you.

Here's a couple pics of ponds I built at our old house in Toronto (one large, one small, both with EPDM liner):

http://www.scisnake.com/toronto/rearpond.jpg (still under construction)
http://www.scisnake.com/toronto/frontpond.jpg

Jeff Hathaway
Sciensational Sssnakes!!

[python_diva_06]

My mom and i built a 4x6x5' pond about 2 years ago and we experimented with things, but, we found that the heavy duty liners were the best (maybe not the easiest) too use...