Having once been an average boy, there is nothing I love more then playing in water.

Several years ago my wife and I bought an above ground swimming pool, a very cheap blowup plastic one. It lasted about a month before it turned green, scummy and got a hole that I never could find. BUT it got me thinking about a pond again and this time I decided to jump in with both feet.

The first thing I had to do was decide on a place to put the pond. I had only one good place to build a pond and it is not all that great. My house is surrounded by large oak, hickory and maple trees which is the reason I bought the house in the first place. But when it comes to ponds this is not the best place to build. There is no place on my property that gets full sun all day long. Some areas get no direct sun at all. Moss does not grow on a rolling stone, but it sure grows in my side yard....

There is no flat spot in my front yard, the left side of the house is flat, but I never visit there that much and there are few windows that look out that way. I wanted to be able to see the pond from the house so the only spot left was the back yard. I have a very small back yard. It is just a cleared area between the trees and the house. I believe it gets sun in the summer for about 5 hours, but this depends on the time of year.

Shade is not all that bad as I found out after the pond was built. On the Internet pond forum the biggest bich is GREEN water, allege. Every year in the spring the water turns pea soup green and stays that way for weeks. This happened to me too the first year shortly after I put the pond in. It lasted for two week then overnight the water turned clear and because my pond only gets sun a few hours a day it stayed that way.

With a shady pond you are going to be restricted on the plants you buy if you want flowers. This does not seem to be too big a problem, I have found many plants that flower in the shade. The big problem is leaves from the trees. Every Fall I put up a PCV pipe frame and cover it with bird netting . This works great, I still get some leaves in the pond, but they are easily cleaned out.

The other problem I had with location is that in the spring wet season the yard can be best described by the movie title "And A River Flows Through It" . It may not be a river, but it is a small shallow stream. This would not be so bad if it flowed all year, but most of the year it is very dry. For this reason I had to find a way to raise the pond above ground level or it would be flooded in the wet season. (You don't want ground water or surface water flowing into your pond. It brings all kind of nasty stuff with it.) I started with the idea of using wood timbers to build a one or two foot wall and digging out the bottom for the proper depth. I never liked the idea as it was expensive for the wood. You really need 6" X 6" treated timbers and they are like $20 a piece. I knew handling them (heavy) and making sure they stay together might be a problem.

I thought of just digging a hole and piling the dirt up around it to make a Bern, but I heard several people say you need a concrete ring around the edge of the pond or the rocks will keep sliding into the water or the sides will collapse . Mixing that amount of concrete was more work then I was willing to do and getting a concrete truck even close to the pond site was impossible.

Because of the water that flows through the yard I needed a way for the water to get around the pond which would block the flow. I dug a trench around where the pond would be dug and buried a drainage pipe with its end in a trench filled with river rock. (French drain) the plan was the water would flow into the rock filled trench and into the drainage pipe. Of course in the three years the pond has been in we have not had a lot of rain at one time that flooded the back yard like it used to, but I think it will work fine if the drought ever ends.

To lay out the pond I got out a 50 foot garden hose screwed the ends together and moved it all over the yard in different shapes until I decided on a lopsided oval. Although it is not very creative, it was easy to layout and proved easy to put the liner in.

Next I dug a trench all the way around the outside edge of the future pond. I started with the highest side and dug down about 8 inches and then kept digging the trench and using a level to keep the bottom level as I could. Next I pored about 3 inches of large gravel (river rock that I got a good price on) in the bottom of the trench all the way around. Then starting at the high side I put a 8x8x16"concrete block holes up on top the gravel. I then moved around the gravel until the block was level and about 3 inches out of the ground. I then did the same thing with more blocks until I had a ring of blocks all the way around. Easy to say, but a b---- to do. I think now that it would have worked better if I used smaller gravel the stuff I had was 1 to 2 inch stuff. 1/2 inch would be better.

I tried everything to make sure the blocks were level, but they still looked low in places I know now it was an optical illusion, but it was impossible to tell at the time. There is no good way to do this, some people say to use a long 2x4 with a level on top of it to span across the pond edge, but this does not work well. I defy you to find a perfectly straight 10 foot2x4. If it is not straight then your wall may not be level. Using a level to measure from one block to the next is not a perfect way to do it either because errors creep into the system. If the bubble is even a tiny bit off blocks 10 or so away will be off by an inch. I tried water levels and line levels, but in both cases I could take multiple readings and they would all be different. I even tried taping a laser pointer to the top of a level, that did not work either The slightest movement at the level end would move the spot two inches. One good way that I did not try, is to get a plastic drop cloth. Before you dig the hole or after you dig down about 6 inches, lay it over the outside edge of the pond. Fill it with water until you can measure from the water surface to the top of the edge at any point. That would be level like someone said "you can't fool water."

When I got the blocks as level as I could, I mixed a thin mixture of Portland cement and sand and pored it in the holes and between the blocks. I just used enough to fill the bottom of the block about two inches. It was still a LOT of concrete. What I hope is that the concrete will stabilize the gravel and keep the blocks from moving. It seems to be working so far.

Next I filled in the holes in the blocks with dirt and then backfilled the outside of the pond wall with dirt making a bern around the entire outside of the pond. ( After filling the pond I found that the edge was close to perfectly level, the only low spot was exactly where I wanted the overflow. I don't know how I did it.....) Turns out I wasted a lot of time trying to level the blocks. With this block system if one edge is a little too low you can just shove some carpet under the liner to level it up. If I would have figured that out earlier I would not have sweat the blocks so much.

While building the wall I put in a few 4" blocks with holes under the wall to act like a culvert. This allowed drainage of the inside of the wall until I dug it out. Without the drain I would have had a very shallow pond the first rain storm.

By this time it was late September and too late for me to finish the pond in 1998 so that was as far as I got before winter.

In April 1999 I took a week off and started digging. I had bought a tiller the year before and it paid for itself the first day. I used the tiller to break up the soil and then all I had to do was shovel it into a wheelbarrow and cart it out. That's all ! ! ! I can't imagine how hard it would have been if I had tried to dig it with out the tiller.

I could not believe how much dirt was in that hole. The tiller would dig down about five inches that was about fifteen wheelbarrows full of dirt and each wheelbarrow was fifteen shovels full and each shovel was 8.25 pounds. Then the wheelbarrow had to be pushed up a ramp that got steeper as the hole got deeper. In all I pushed out about 190 wheelbarrows full of dirt 2850 shovels full or about 11.75 tons of dirt !

After I got the hole cleaned up the sides trimmed up and the shelves squared up, I covered it in carpet. Nothing is too good for my pond, so I used brand new $27 a square yard padded carpet. Well I did not pay that much, in fact I got it free, my brother-in-law's company was throwing it out. It really did look nice even though I had to cut it up to get it to lay flat.

For the liner I found a place local that had it for 70 cents a sq. ft. I could have gotten it cheaper on the WEB, but with the shipping charges it would have been about the same and then I would have had to hassle with shipping. The liner was 36 feet long and 20 feet wide and heavy as..... well a pond liner... I should have charged them as there was only a woman on duty when I went to pick it up. It was all we could do to pull it off the roll and of course the first 20 feet was damaged so we had to pull that much more off. They had to use a fork lift to get it into my van.

I thought that putting the liner in the hole would be impossible for one person, but it turned out to be one of the easier tasks. I just dragged it over the hole and pulled it around until I had it where I wanted it. TIP: You might want to wear gloves, I smelled like rubber for the next two days. That smell does not come off your hands very easy.

I smoothed out the liner as best as I could, but was dismayed at how many large folds were in it. There is no way you are going to fold a 2D object around the inside of a 3D hole with out folds ! I started filling the pond with water and five hours later it was topped off. By then the folds had magically disappeared ! The weight of all that water just stretched or flattened the folds right out. There are still folds, but you hardly notice them at all. One little problem I had was the pump, I had to hook up the pump piping after the liner was installed and before I could put the pump in I had to have some water in the bottom to stretch the liner out to fit the bottom. I put about 1 1/2 foot of water in the pond and then took off my shoes and socks and climbed in to install the pump (now my feet smell like rubber too.) The water comes from a community well and is kind of cold, no that is not right, it is freezing.... Well I had just finished putting in the pump when I stepped back and tripped on the side of the pond. I sat down in about a foot of water. I stood up so fast I almost did not get wet. So I had my ceremonial dunking a little early...

I went up to the local "Rock Shop" (Luck Stone) and ordered 1 1/2 tons of Heather Gray rock to be delivered a few days later. This sand stone rock is gray on the inside and reddish on the outside, very nice looking. Of course the day they delivered it I found out that you are not supposed to use sand stone in a pond because it can erode in the water and color the water. Surprise ! After a year of research I had never heard that until I had a ton and a half of rock sitting in my drive way. I decided to use it anyway, but to keep it out of the water as best I could. The rock just made it around the outside of the pond with only a few pieces left over for the water fall . So I ended up buying another 2 tons of rock for the water fall and to fill in around the pond and I still did not have enough to please me. Ever since I have been buying carloads of rock and bringing them home, probably another ton by now.

All the dirt from the pond hole went into a huge pile to make the water fall. I started with a bunch of concrete blocks piled in the shape of a U with the open end facing the pond. This looked a little like a concrete block BBQ. I figured this would act like a retaining wall to keep the dirt from pushing the 100 gal. Rubbermaid tank (bio filter) out of position and would keep the mound of dirt from flatting out or collapsing. This has worked very well and it also helped hold up the rocks along side the water way. I used no mortar on the blocks just stacked them then pounded rebar and wood stakes in to hold them in place.

Once the pond was filled and rocked I started on the water fall. This was the one part of the project that I did not plan in advance. I started by digging a square hole at the top in front of the tank about 2 1/2 feet and 18 inches deep and lining it with concrete blocks. This is the first pool I planed to fill it with water plants, but this did not work out as there is almost no sun at all. This small pool is fed from the overflow of the bio filter tank. I had first thought that I would run the pipes from the bio-filter overflow into the top pool under the water, but I found that I could create another water fall over the rocks that are hiding the tank. The top pool overflows over a water fall and runs over a cascade of small rocks and then flows into another pool at the bottom of the hill that feeds a waterfall into the pond itself. Well that is what I planed anyway. The cascades did not work out I ended up with a rock lined stream about 45 degrees from the top water fall to the bottom pool. I found some great rock for this at the local rock shop. The rock is smaller then your fist and comes in several shades from red to black. This looked very nice until the algae grew on it, but it still looks good.

Next I covered the water fall with carpet and then put down the liner. Putting the liner down in such small holes proved more difficult then laying it in the big pond.

I designed the top pond with the front side lower then the other three sides then I found a flat rock that I placed in the low side sticking out over the edge to form a spill ledge for the top water fall. I used Great Stuff foam to seal under the rock and to glue large rocks to each side of the top. This forces the water to run over the top of the rock and keeps the water in the center.

The short stream section was lined with small rocks that I glued down with Great Stuff. If you just lay the rocks down the water will run under the rocks and you will not see the water until it gets to the bottom.

The bottom pool and water fall was made the same way as the top one except it is half the size. It is very important that you make sure that the spill rocks are level and slop down toward the down hill side. The more water you have coming over the falls the less important this is.

It might sound like I knew what I was doing building the falls, but really it was all guess work. I was kind of surprised when I turned the water pump on and every thing worked perfectly. After you get your water running you have to be very careful that you do not have any leaks and that the water is not splashing outside the liner. If you change anything check for leaks again. I only put some small rocks on the top spill rock to make it look more natural and it changed the flow pattern ever so slightly and this let the water run over the edge of the liner. You can loose a huge amount of water in a hurry this way. Also things change all by them self do to settling, you have to keep a eye on the water level. Even after the falls were running for a few weeks I found new leaks in the water fall. If you start to loose water check the water fall first, it is the most likely place for a leak.

Against the advice of most of the people on the pond forum, I put shallow shelves around the edge of my pond. I also have a large shelf at one end that is about a foot deep. At one time the large shelf was going to be a bog. I planned to fill this area with large flat pans to hold the dirt that would be just under the surface of the water. I also planed to have a wall between this area and the pond. I decided not to use the wall while digging the hole and have not filled the area with pans I only have two at this time. I have filled this area with under water plants and water poppies. The fish just love this area they lay eggs in the plants and then spend the next few days hunting the babies down. Fish don't have the greatest maternal instincts, but I don't want a pond full of mongrel fish either.

I planted reeds and sweet rush along the other shelves potted in narrow troughs used for wallpapering. This really gives the pond a natural look. I may someday regret the shelves if a heron or raccoon gets in the pond, but right now I am very glad I have them.

As for fish I don't have Koi just gold fish swimming incognito. 2 orange Comets - 2 Shubunkins orange and black and 2 Sarasa Comets that look just like orange and white Koi. All the fish are about 4 inches right now, but seem to be growing bigger each day. I also put in about 15 Rosy Reds a type of minnow that looks more white then red. They were very small about 1 inch, but the big fish ignore them most of the time. I have seen one of the Sarasas having fun swimming through middle of the schooling little fish, not trying to eat them just breaking up the party.

2002 update.

Almost 3 years later I still have most of the fish I started with . They are now about 7 or 8 inches and have had many babies that are as big as the original fish were when I got them. The Rosy Reds have grown to about 4 inches and had babies last year.

The pond was a LOT of work to build and expensive too, but I really feel it is one of the best things I have ever done. I have got more enjoyment out of the pond then I ever have out of any of the other hobbies I have been involved in.

I have had some people ask me how much work a pond is to take care of and I have to answer that it is no work at all only pleasure.