Pond Project #2 - Beginning

Not long after putting in the 

first wildlife pond I was soon 

thinking about a bigger and better one.

I started looking at some preformed ponds

and decided upon the Bermuda Sands shape.

It seemed a good size, wasn't too deep and

came with a wildlife escape route built in.

Dimensions
Length:  128 x Width.84 x Max Depth.36cm
Volume:  164 litres

The chosen site for the pond was at the back
of the garden just to the front of the Acer tree.

With the site selected,
the digging started.

My Daughter helping out with the dig.

Hard at work.

What a good litte grafter!

I put a large tough plastic sheet
down to the side of the dig site to
put all the excavated earth onto.

The beauty of doing this is that you can
move the plastic sheet around the
lawn daily to avoid damaging your lawn.

This buys you time until you can
do something with all the soil you
have removed from the hole!

Getting deeper.

Taking shape.

Nearly done.

Once the hole was dug I lined the bottom
with some sand and put the liner into place.

Liner in place, water added.

Is it level?

With the liner in place first
impressions weren't too promising.

It looked ugly and it didn't look level to me.

In place, but not much to look at.

Already I was having second
thoughts about the whole thing.

Had I wasted my money on the liner?

What an Eyesore!

As I always say to the Wife
'Rome wasn't built in a Day'.

Obviously it wasn't a finished article yet,
there was much more work needed.

Sifting the soil.

Whilst I contemplated what I was
going to do with my new installation
I set about sorting the freshly removed earth.

I spent a good few hours putting it
through a sieve and must have filled
the green box almost fifty or sixty times.

Most of the soil went back onto the
garden borders and what ever was left over
we took to the local waste centre.

Looks uneven to me!

Despite checking for level during installation, 

after the water was added I was horrified to see 

that the liner was sloping down at one end.

Finally level.

Alot of time and energy was spent
getting it as level as possible.

It wasn't an easy task either,
you try moving 164 litres of water!

When I was finally happy with the level,
I threw in some bunches of Elodea Crispa.