Building A Pond?

[henda11]

what kind of budget would i be looking at to build a pretty decent sized pond? i want to build a pond and maybe house some mirror and common carp of small sizes.

[chesters1]

depends on where you live ,were on sand so would have to fork out for a liner but those on clay dont need to.

the liner is very expensive and ofcourse the final price depends on how big a pond you want ,dont go too small otherwise you may get problems ,as big as you dare restricted by how much you can afford is best.

theres plenty of advice out there for building ponds and lined ponds need all the work done to a high standard before putting in the liner.if it springs a leak you cant just pull it back out 3 years later to fix it

Edited March 30, 2008 by chesters1

[Tyke]

Tell me about it, its just happened to me!

The pond is about 9 years old and the liner is leaking so i have had to empty the pond and drag the liner out.

My fish are now on holiday in my mates pond whilst i get the chance to fit a new moulded pond.

I aint using a liner again.

[Steve Walker]

How long is a piece of string?

 

If you own some boggy land, you may just need to get a big hole dug. You need to go to a company like this, or a local contractor if your needs are more modest.

 

If we're talking garden pond scale rather than farm pond / small lake scale, you will almost certainly need a liner of some sort. Your options are :

 

flexible pond liner

 

pre-fabricated rigid liner

 

sealed concrete construction

 

I've never got on with the rigid jobs, and concrete construction is a bit specialised and easy to completely screw up if you don't know what you are doing, so let's go with flexible liner. Liners come in various materials and qualities. As a rule of thumb, the more you pay, the tougher and more flexible the liner. The best liners are made of 1mm butyl rubber, IMO. You can get thinner butyl (you mostly see .75mm for sale rather than 1mm), you can get EPDM, PVC, woven polythene, etc. They come with different lifetime guarantees, different resistance to being punctured and different ability to mould to the contours of your pond. Mostly, you get what you pay for.

 

Let's say you go with .75mm butyl. It's usually five pounds odd per square metre. As a bare minimum, I think you'd be talking 3mx3mx1m, which would require a 5mx5m sheet of liner. If we say £5.35 a square metre, that works out at £133.75. You could halve that cost if you used PVC, but personally I wouldn't. You could keep a few small carp in a pond that size with no filtration, plenty of plants and minimal feeding. If you want more carp and you want them to grow quickly (adding lots of food), you need a much bigger pond or you need to buy or build a filter and run a pump. 1m is a bit on the shallow side, too, you probably want more like 1.5-2m. If you want the sort of stocking density that koi keepers have with good growth rates, clear water and good water quality, you're looking at a big bio filter, large pump, UV unit, decent solids removal via brushes or a vortex and ideally some sort of reed bed / watercress area for nitrate removal. Depending on how much you can improvise and how much you buy off the shelf, you're getting on from hundreds to thousands.

 

So, I'd say anything from £60 to £POA!

[ColinW]

Tell me about it, its just happened to me!

The pond is about 9 years old and the liner is leaking so i have had to empty the pond and drag the liner out.

My fish are now on holiday in my mates pond whilst i get the chance to fit a new moulded pond.

I aint using a liner again.

 

I made a pond at my dad's house using a PVC liner. It is now over twenty years old, even though it was supposed to only last ten years. It has developed the odd leak, due to their aquatic dogs, but the leaks were easily repared using patches made from some offcut material kept for that purpose. I have also made an above ground "water feature" at my own house, using cheap builders' polythene as a liner. That has also lasted several years with no problems at all. Obviously if that ever leaks I'll just have to re-line it because polythene won't stick to glue, but at a tenner a roll who cares?

A friend of mine went the rigid moulded way. When that sprang a leak he spent three years of abortive attempts using ever more expensive adhesives trying to fix it. Eventually we did it by bolting a stainless plate on either side with a load of mastic between. Not exactly a quick fix like patching a PVC or butyl liner!

The way to make a PVC liner last is to make sure that no dry part of it is in direct sunlight, so you need an overhang of rock on the sun-facing side.

 

PS. I just remembered, I got the big PVC liner half price because the girl at the shop had cut a hole in it unpacking it, so it had one patch from the day it was installed!

Edited June 17, 2008 by ColinW