Hey all, First of all I am pleased to say that this is my first thread on these forums, and I look forward to chatting with the people on here. I am very new to water gardening, and have only just begun researching the materials I will need to add a decorative pond to my backyard. Thus far I have decided to dig a small pond, approximately 300 gallons in size. I would like to add some artificial pond plants in it, and perhaps some lighting, but no fish or wildlife. What I am unsure of is which type of pond liner I should go about using when I build this pond. I understand that flexible liners can be easy to work with, since they give you the freedom to fit the lining along the contours and edges of the hole that gets dug. However, what about pre-formed liners? Are they easier to work with, particularly for a novice pond DIYer such as myself? I would think that there are probably a greater range of options for pre-formed liners that are smaller in size (around 200 gallons), but I'm only speculating. What type of liner do you guys think I should go with for installing my first pond?
When I made the ponds I now have now, I thought of a liner. I listened to a friend who had a liner pond and decided that liners were too fragile and fraught with problems. Both my ponds are made of reinforced concrete. Built in 1999(580gal) and 2001(270 gal) neither pond leaks and both are hosts to a variety of amphibian wildlife. Animals come and drink, birds get a bath and in wintertime the human gets to walk on water(I clean the dead vegetation in hard to reach places when the ice freezes) Liners are easier to install and accommodate creativity but if they leak you have to drain the water. Pre-forms are O.K. if you like the shape/design. People rarely do concrete but I was comfortable with using the material. Concrete is rather permanent and a pain if you want to remove it. Jerry
It's interesting that you mention concrete as an alternative for liners, because I was thinking of that too...but since I'm a novice at pond building, for my first pond I think I am going to go with a flexible liner. A friend of mine who owns a pond in his backyard recommended that I get a liner such as this one: // mod edit: removed link Keep in mind this would be for a 300-400 gallon pond. Do you think a 10x13 ft. liner would be appropriate for a pond of this size? I reckon I could just cut any excess liner out so it fits the periphery of the hole I dig.
We have a pond in our garden that is approx.10 foot round and 4 foot deep. We used a good quality Butyl liner as they last so much longer than other thinner ones do. It had proved to be well worth the money we spent on it.
I have been building a pond for a neighbor the last few weeks, we are going to start laying in rock tomorrow. We used a 50ft x 50 ft EPDM liner at first but punched about twenty holes in it in the first 6 big rocks. We pulled the rocks and the liner out and have a better liner now from a company in Prineville Oregon. We put the EPDM in again and then the new liner over that one this time. I will have to remember to take the camera tomorrow and get some pics, this is a pretty big pond. I am really looking forward to getting stone set in there. I wish I could remember the name of the new liner, I will get that tomorrow, the new liner is very tough, but not very flexible like the EPDM. I have four quite large clay ponds with no liner here at my place, they are great but I hate the 3 ft water level drop each summer with the water slowly leaking away into the clay. After we finish with the neighbors pond I want to build a couple stone and liner ponds here at our place. I am quite new to this stone and liner pond thing, but I am finding it rather fascinating.
Some pics of the pond I worked on yesterday, not a lot done as yet, but getting close to being able to throw all the rock in. This is the new 50x60 ft liner over the top of the original 50 x 50 ft EPDM liner. The EPDM as I noted was punctured many time in the initial rock placing and then the three of us working on it now all got involved and took all that out and are replacing. I tried to find out the name of the upper liner, but no one could remember. The owner was going to look on the invoice and find out, I should get that from her tomorrow, she and I are going to two rock quarry's tomorrow to find what all they have available. I will have to hand pick the rock out of what they have blasted and load it back in my truck a ton at a time but I should have all that done early next week. We got a few stones placed yesterday after digging out another dump truck load of soil. It is painfully slow going so far, but it should start moving faster as there is more that I can do on my own....
Impressive. That sure is a lot of work, but I bet it's going to be beautiful when done. Please keep us up to date on the progess.
