Garden Pond

[Bill]

I'm not sure what I'm asking, except that if anyone can recommend someone in the Chester/Wirral/Liverpool area, I'd be very keen to hear of them.

Son, whose house is in bits for cabling, plumbing, plastering etc. has now got a pond problem. He has rung several contractors, but none has returned the call so far.

The house came with a round, ring-doughnut shaped pond with a fountain in the middle. The pond has loads of fish, which I have to feed on any days that he is not there in the summer. The pond is covered with 2 layers of net, but the foxes adjust this so that they can have a convenient drink, and the 2 herons have discovered that they can bite holes in it. They get about one fish a week.

There is a valve in the water to point the electric pump at the fountain or the recirc water feature. The fountain is slightly leaning, water flows over just one side of the bowl, so that is never turned on.

In the last week, we noticed that the water level was going down, so we had to turn on the input tap. We found that the liner was pulling away from the crazy-paving path that encircles the pond, but in installing a whole bunch of my clamps to clamp it back prior to re-gluing it to the paving, I discovered that in at least one large area the overflowing water had washed away the soil or hardcore beneath the paving. This means the paving is sagging and lowering the edge of the liner.

I think he needs someone who can decant the fish (into a child's paddling pool?), remove and possibly remake and replace the liner after a builder redoes the crazy paving and foundations and gets the fountain upright. Then we can look at the pump (possibly clogged after we disturbed the liner) to find out why it has just started tripping the breaker.

Ideally, I'd like to work out a place for the fountain valve so that we don't have to wade into the pond to turn it, and to think of better ideas for supporting netting or other bird deterrents.

I suppose we need a landscape gardener, but as I say, so far no-one local has returned a call.

[Chris French]

In message , Bill writes

Can't realy help on that front I'm afraid.

However:

IME, They will be fine left for a week or so with no food.

AIUI, Herons tend like to land and then walk towards the water, apparently a vertical barrier can deter them from approaching the pond.

I've no idea if it worked , but the previous owner had something like that here round the pond - metal brackets to which he could attach plastic mesh fencing. We've never had any Herons visit though so have never used it.

[Mike Barnes]

I started to pen a reply but you don't say how big the pond is, roughly how long it's been installed, how many fish there are, and what sort of fish they are.

Overall it sounds like fairly drastic rebuilding would be preferable to piecemeal repairs which wouldn't stand the test of time.

[dennis]

You just need one wire about 15" off the ground. They can't step over it and wont go under. They never land on the water AFAIK.

[Bill]

From memory, the pond is about 12 to 15 feet diameter, with the central plinth for the fountain about 4' dia. I have no idea what the fish are, but they a mix of gold and black ones, and the food is, I think, sold as for koi. There are quite a lot - maybe 25 to 30 or more.

We don't know the age of the pond. It possibly was installed in the

60's.

Son now thinks it would be better to have separate pumps for recirculating the water and the fountain, but he has been told that fish ponds and fountains are not compatible because of clogging by fish and bird guano. The current diverter valve for the fountain only produces a "head" of about 1 to 2", so the current arrangement hardly seems worth much effort.

My suggestion when he called here this morning was to get a builder to start again, making the same pond out of reinforced concrete. I assume this would be one foundation layer, one mesh and cement reinforced layer and then a top decorative layer. He seemed to think this would be better than trying to replace the foundations and then use a new plastic membrane, but there's no vehicular access, and , of course, there is the question of cost.

[Mike Barnes]

OK, thanks, not new then. The fact that liner is pulling away from the surround is worrying and might indicate problems underneath where you can't see them.

I agree that if you're going to have a fountain, a separate pump would be a good idea. It's a matter of taste but I wouldn't go for a fountain at all, primarily because of the noise. It would get very monotonous and eventually rather irritating I would think. That's what we found with our waterfall, anyway. So if you are going to have a fountain, make it separately switchable, perhaps on a timer.

All that concrete sounds a bit drastic. Our larger pond is rather larger than your son's, and it's just butyl membrane on second-hand carpet on soil. The only concrete is around the edge, where the membrane is sandwiched between two courses of a low stone wall. If yours is the same, I'd go for removing the liner, inspecting and making good what's underneath, then installing a new liner properly joined to the path.

This might be a step too far, but if you really want to discourage herons, you make the bottom drop off steeply for a (vertical) foot or more from the bank. This stops them wading in, which they quite like to do.

Our herons get lots of frogs but very few fish AFAICS. When we built the pond we stocked it with 20 golden rudd at 50p each. We were recommended those because they're easy to look after. Fifteen years on, we've got hundreds, and we've never fed them or taken any anti-heron precautions. You might consider letting the current population dwindle and replace it when the works are complete. On the evidence here I think herons don't like cheap fish. :-)

[Bill]

In message , Mike Barnes writes

Thanks, that's all very useful to know. The liner of this pond just appears to be glued to the edges of the crazy paving, so it has a vertical edge all round, not tucked under anything. I think what has happened is that, with all the rain in the last couple of years, the pond has simply overflowed and washed away the support. Then the paving has moved and so on.

I've passed all the relevant info on, plus the other suggestions about anti-heron wire or walls.

[matthelliwell]

Back when I had a large pond, I ran my liner horizontally off the edge of t he pond and had a small part lower than the rest so that I could control wh ere it overflowed and I wouldn't have to worry about water running behind t he liner and making it float.

Perhaps if you can get the fishing part of the work done, it'd be easier to get someone interested in quoting. Moving the fish into a temporary tank i s easy. A child's pool is fine so long as foxes and herons can't get to it. Pump water from the pond into the temporary pool and as the level drops sc oop the fish out with a net. If you use a lot of fresh tap water in the tem porary pool, just make sure you add dechloninator first.

Matt

[Bill]

I think we are now thinking of something like this, with a new liner forming a sort of brim all the way round under an added rustic (is that the word?) wall.

I've taken some photos.

[www.GymRatZ.co.uk]

Childs paddling pools are fantastic. My rather large Koi that came with the house have been living in an "Intek" 8' diameter paddling pool (about £10 from Makro I think) for the last 4 and a bit years while my simple "pond liner replacement" turned into a full blown major building project with foundations, block walls and fibreglass etc...

Bought a "Laguna Pressure-Flo" filter which is mechanical, biological and UV filtration in one handy sized unit also includes a suitably rated pump which could also be used in the future to keep the re-made pond water in good health. I sat the big yellow pond Iris in the paddling pool on an upturned bucked and most of the fish survived. The biggest ones have grown a good

4" longer in that period, must be around 16 to 18" long now. Filter I bought was the biggest in the range (think it was the 12000) so way bigger than needed however the abundant flow kept the water from freezing and the water return from the filter was set in the iris pot to "fire" the water into the pond which also provided enough air being dragged into the water to keep the boys happy.

Only thing to be aware of is to wait a week after filling the kiddie pool from the tap before putting fish in to allow the chlorine to fizz off. (when the water starts going green)

Pumps eventually pack up. they generally can't be repaired as the wires are moulded into the pump body so when they short out you have to get a new one which can be a pricey venture. All that said, Ponds add soo much to the garden, visual, nature and audio that I'd put myself through the trauma and expense of building another one if I ever moved house. :)