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    Thread: Nightstorm's Overly Ambitious Virginia Build - 15,000 gallon semi-raised block pond

    1. #81
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      It's all about function ahead of form with regard to water circulation. Sometimes the "KISS" theory is the best option in this regard.
      Mike

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    2. #82
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      Chris: Welcome to the annual meeting of OAPB, Overly Ambitious Pond Building. My name is Chris. I am an overly ambitious builder and your leader for this meeting.

      Everyone: Hi, Chris.

      Chris: Will those who wish, please join me in the Serenity Prayer.

      Everyone: ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.’

      Chris: I want to thank you all for attending. Let’s start by – yes, a question?

      Aaron: Are we saying that we need to be more serene? Is that our biggest problem? Because I admit, I’ve smashed two shovels and a pick against that one boulder that I can’t dig out and it’s…

      Dan: No, it’s asking for courage. If we just had the courage to keep at it, even in the rain and snow, even in the face of distractions, we’d finally be able to finish these projects of ours.

      Emily: I think you’re pretty dedicated, Bill. What kind of distractions are you talking about?

      Dan: Kids’ sporting events, college graduations, weddings. My divorce...

      Chris: Ooookay, well. I think different people need different inspirations. I know that I could always use a bit more wisdom - wisdom to know when to hire some help, or rent heavy equipment, or stop talking about “the pond” at work…

      Bob: You know, I think people just ask “how’s the pond going?” to be polite, but they’re really praying you just say “same old, same old.”

      Chris: Or maybe the wisdom not to attempt something quite so big on the first try, or not to incorporate every “neat idea” that I see on the internet…

      Aaron: Or not to keep buying fish before the main pond is even done.

      Chris: Exactly! Now, I’d like to start today’s session with a thought experiment. Imagine that you’re still working on your pond’s plumbing, you don’t have electricity to the filter pit yet, and you’ve got several months before you can possibly move fish in. It’s too early to be buying anything “decorative” for the pond – you’re still working on the essentials. You’ve run an errand to a nearby town a little less than an hour from home, let’s say you’ve dropped a nephew off at the train station. You’re driving back alone on a Saturday afternoon and you see a sign up ahead: Betty’s Nursery.

      Aaron: Oh, no.

      Chris: You notice immediately that they seem to have a lot of small evergreens, and it looks like they have an assortment of concrete statues back behind a row of Japanese maples. Then you see it – rows and rows of landscaping rocks. Not all bundled up on pallets, but spread out on the ground, off to one side. What do you do?

      Everyone:

      Chris: I’m seeing a lot of glassy stares here. I think everyone knows the right answer, don’t they? What do we do?

      Bill: Do they have those boxwoods that are shaped into two or three balls? Because those are -

      Chris: It doesn’t matter if – ok, yes. They have those. But that’s not the point. You’re not ready to buy plants yet. What do you do?

      Dan, mumbling: Keep driving…

      Aaron: Note the address for the future?

      Chris: Yes! Perfect, either way. But we don’t... stop... the car! It’d be like walking through a donut shop while you’re dieting. OK, that’s good. I think we’ve set the stage for a pond update. Who’d like to begin?
      Last edited by Nightstorm; 10-27-2015 at 11:06 PM.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



    3. #83
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      2014 SUMMARY

      Quote Originally Posted by Nightstorm View Post
      I just have the filter pit, fence and fiberglass before I can start moving some fish. Rock work can wait.
      See that quote up there? Yeah, that’s me, circa June 2014. I “just” had the filter pit (including concrete pads, 4 million valves and associated piping, 3 pumps, 2 sieves and a bakki shower), fence (complete lack of experience installing fences? Check!) and fiberglass (complete lack of experience with fiberglass? Check!) before I could move fish.

      Pay attention, kids. This is a sign of someone who is really bad at estimating project completion times. Of course, as we arrive at the three year anniversary of breaking ground on this project, this should be nothing new.

      Before I begin my update, I thought it would be fair to provide the Reader’s Digest version (do they even print that anymore?) of 2014. I actually ALMOST got fish in before winter. I got the filter pit done (although the bakki shower output was never formally connected), the fence installed (except for one narrow piece under the deck to allow a future electrician to get access), and the fiberglass installed. After filling the pond, I was able to briefly test all of the pumps, sieves, bottom drain aeration, etc., and everything was working. However, October found me chasing a pretty major leak somewhere in the fiberglass, and the temperature eventually dropped too low for additional fiberglassing.

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      Last edited by Nightstorm; 04-07-2015 at 12:03 PM.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



    4. #84
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      BAKKI SHOWER

      For any non-koi friends following along, a Bakki Shower is a biological filter that helps keep the water clean. The sieves in the filter pit take out little pieces of detritus (fish poop, leaves, etc.), while the bakki shower takes out ammonia and similar contaminates that you can’t see. It basically consists of a stack of giant boxes with holes drilled in the bottom of them, and all of the boxes are filled with some sort of material that has lots of nooks and crannies in which “good” bacteria can grow. You pump lots of water onto the top of the stack, and water cascades over everything inside the boxes, flowing from box to box, top to bottom, until it empties out the bottom and returns to the pond. The good bacteria does all of the work for you, cleaning up the water.

      I went with a DIY bakki shower using US Plastics trays. For a pond this size, and a shower being fed by three 4” bottom drains, it is a double-tower design - I have two separate stacks of four trays.

      The first step is drilling lots of lots of little holes in the bottom. I used a ½” step drill bit to drill each hole. Fortunately, there’s a sort of reinforced “webbing” on the bottom of the trays, so you just have to aim the drill bit up into the spaces between the webbing. Very easy – just time consuming.




      The two bottom trays are not drilled. For these trays, I went with 4” outputs on the side, rather than the bottom. The design of these trays lends itself to this sort of exit. I know it’s possible to have the outputs directly on the bottom, and this would reduce the inevitable back-up of water in these bottom-most trays, but it was much easier to engineer side exits.

      I used standard gray 4” electrical connections. I drilled the holes using a hole saw bit, then used roofing sealant to make a waterproof connection when I screwed the two pieces together through the drilled hole. The only real modification I made was to cut off most of the pipe extending into the bottom tray. Since nothing is connected to this within the tray – water just flows in – that extra length was just taking up space.



      The next step was to install air vents. Bakki showers need lots of oxygen for the Good Bacteria to flourish, and this needs to reach all of the trays – even those in the middle. There are many who feel that the rush of water moving from tray-to-tray, top-to-bottom pulls enough air through all the trays. I figured it couldn’t hurt to ensure there was air available for the lower trays.

      I drilled holes and glued together two pieces of pipe – a straight piece on the outside and a 90 degree elbow on the inside. The elbow (pointing down) ensures that water splashing down through the bakki shower doesn’t leak out through these air vents. Such an elbow isn’t necessary on the outside. I also sealed these pipes together, through the wall of the tray, with roofing sealant.

      The trays that will be on the front have vents on three sides (leaving the side abutting the other trays solid), while the trays that will be in the back only have vents on the ends (since the long walls will be pressed against the front trays on one side, and the house wall on the other).



      So, this is what the entire unit looks like when fully assembled:


      And this is the unit in place next to the filter pit. My long range plan is to build a decorative shack around the bakki inspired by Japanese architecture. It will be made of reed or bamboo to ensure lots of air can pass through.



      I created a false bottom for the lower two trays using grating. This allows me to put some additional media at the top of the bottom tray, since the bottom of will consistently be full of water that is flowing out of the output pipes (and therefore shouldn’t have media in the submerged water).

      In hindsight, I think this was one of those design elements that is just unnecessary. You don’t really get that much more space for media at the very top of the tray. If I had it to do again, I would either find a way to move the shower outputs from the side to the bottom (reducing the amount of water that would be standing on the bottom of the trays) and just fill the bottom trays with media, or I would leave the output on the side and just skip the little stand and leave the bottom trays empty.



      For media, I used a combination of feather rock and lava rock. The feather rock was donated by Koiphen member Decube a year or two ago. I chopped it into fist sized pieces with a hammer and chisel. For the lava rock, it is my understanding that it varies greatly in terms of how porous the rock is. I found simple landscaping lava rocks that were already smaller than golf balls and appeared very porous. I used this to fill up most of the remaining shower. I also had a box of bio-balls that I had acquired quite a few years ago, so I tossed these into the mix across the very top. I don’t think they’ll add much to the bio surface area, but they can’t hurt and can only help spread the water out and add oxygen.



      So, there you have my homemade bakki shower. If you’ve been following along, you know that I haven’t turned this on yet, so I can’t comment on its effectiveness. But I have yet to hear from anyone that didn’t love a properly sized bakki shower, so I’m looking forward to seeing what it can do once the pond is up and running this summer.
      Last edited by Nightstorm; 04-07-2015 at 01:37 PM.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



    5. #85
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      FILTER PIT

      Ah, my filter pit. Talk about a love / hate relationship. I spent most of 2012 in this pit, trying to pump out rainfall so that I could dig it just a LITTLE bit deeper, or wider, or whatever. Well, I finally poured a pair of large concrete pads on either end of the pit, and this made all the difference in the world. I had placed a 4” pipe segment through the pit’s footing when it was poured to serve as a French drain. This had been piped all the way out to the creek in back in 2013, so once the pads were put in place, the flooding problem was reduced to a bit of mud in the middle when it rained.

      I also added another layer of blocks to bring the walls above grade. I had been holding out on this layer, looking for “split face” blocks that would have a decorative outer face. These are not sold in the big box stores in my area, nor could I find them in specialty stores. I called a place that makes them, not really very close to me, and they said these were usually custom ordered by construction crews for a specific building. Eventually I realized that there would only be a few inches of the block showing anyway, once I backfilled, and that I had lots of extra regular blocks sitting right next to the pit, so I just finished the wall with regular blocks. I still need to fill the cell walls with concrete before adding a cap.

      In the picture below, you can see shiny strips of metal sticking out of the wall here and there. I mortared pipe-holders in place, thinking this would be how I would fasten all of the piping to the walls. Only later did I realize how much easier it was to simply screw vertical strips of pressure treated wood to the concrete walls, and then attach the pipes to these pieces of wood at whatever height I needed.



      Manifolds. Yes, I have a lot of TPRs and TPR valves. Twelve, to be exact. I’ve effectively divided the pond into three virtual squares, each centered on a separate bottom drain. My design has four TPRs for each of these squares. In the two spots where this would result in two TPRs in the same place, I moved one of the TPRs up near the surface to give some options regarding moving surface debris towards skimmers.

      I don’t expect to use all of these TPRs - I just want the flexibility. I don’t know how debris is going to want to settle out on the floor of the pond. There are too many variables, with the wind direction, presence of a concrete column in one of the squares, waterfalls affecting circulation in another square, and so on. Having these TPRs available will allow me to play with the water return to maximize efficiency, both in terms of overall flow and keeping the bottom of the pond clean.

      There are two main “trunks” to the TPR manifolds, one from each of the 4” bakki shower outputs.



      These “trunks” are then connected to the pipes in the pit wall via PVC flex pipe. They are layered, so that the pipes associated with the bottom trunk are positioned about 3” out from the top trunk’s pipes to avoid collisions. Although it’s not shown in this picture, the ends of the two trunks are then connected to balance flow and allow the winter bakki-bypass (which is only connected to the top trunk) to power all/any TPRs.

      Let me tell you about flex pipe. It gives that little bit of wiggle room that I needed with so many crisscrossing pipes. But it’s a slow process to install. For one of those flex pipe connections, you have to first cut the piece of flex pipe, making it a little longer than you think to account for the minor twist you will applying to it. Then you glue the pipe (using a special cement) into the fixed manifold. You have to be careful, because until that glued joint is totally solid, it can easily just pop out of the fixed pipe. Now is not the time to be making the flex pipe flex, as it will just pop out. I typically let this set overnight. The next morning, I dry fit the pipe elbow onto the other end, twist this into place on the output pipe sticking through the wall, and shave the flex pipe down to just the right length. I would also mark the exact orientation of the elbow on the flex pipe. Once that was done, I could then glue the 90 elbow in place. Once again, I couldn’t immediately twist the pipe into place and glue the 90 elbow onto the output pipe, because the flex pipe would pop out of the elbow. Once again, this needed to sit for hours, typically overnight or all day while I was at work. Getting all 12 of these TPR pipes (plus a handful of others on the skimmer circuit) placed was time consuming.



      The above set of TPRs represent the circuits that go from the 3 bottom drains to the two sieves to the bakki shower and then back to the pond via the TPR manifolds.

      On the other side of the filter pit is the skimmer circuits. Two skimmers have 4” lines descending into the filter pit, where they are connected to a pump and returned via a much smaller return manifold. This manifold powers the water fall, water feature, island/column, winter waterfall bypass, and exercise circuit. This entire side of the pit is more open, as I allowed spare room on the filter pit walls for a UV (or two), as well as space on the concrete pad for a future pressurized polishing filter of some type.



      The rest of the plumbing was a challenge due to the sheer bulk of the elements. You don’t really get a sense of the size of the 4” ball valves, or even the 90 degree turns or the clean-out elements until you’ve laid them out on the ground end-to-end. The 4” ball valves were just a bit too wide to be placed right next to each other on the BD pipes exiting the wall – they had to be staggered. I had to change sieve/pump placement on the fly, as pieces that I had planned to place near the wall nearest the input / output pipes needed to be placed on the further wall to allow for the length of pipe needed before the pipe could turn to enter the equipment.

      I also found that I simply didn’t have room for several of the elements that I had put in my design. For example, the bottom drain “flush” pipes – no room for extra 4” pieces. By and large, I got everything that I needed, as well as most of what I had wanted. Also, I used fernco connectors where I could to allow future modifications.

      Not much room to walk around in the pit now, but I’ll just have to figure out a way to reach down from above to clean out the sieves, which will be the most common reason to access the filter pit.

      Finally, I was able to put a French drain along the very bottom of the pit and connect this to the pipe I had already run to the creek. There are three other pipes that also run through the pit’s footer, at the very bottom. These are the waterfall and water feature pipes. Each of these has a tiny ball valve at its lowest point, so I can totally drain these pipes in the winter. I built a small box around these pipes, covered it, then poured gravel over the French pipe and the box. Any water that enters the filter pit now goes out through the drain, and the pit stays relatively dry due to the gravel.





      Here’s a picture of the nearly completed pit – I just need to connect the inputs and outputs of the bakki shower. I suppose it’s just a mass of spaghetti to anyone but me, but I hope the flexibility and redundancy that I’ve designed into it will work well.



      Now that it’s pretty much complete, it’s clear that there’s not much room to walk around, especially squeezing between the sieves and the tall clean-out vents on the bottom drains & skimmers. I’ll just have to figure out a way to reach down from above to clean out the sieves, which will be the most common reason to access the filter pit. Perhaps some type of small trap door over each sieve so that I can just kneel on the (future) deck over the filter pit and scoop out debris.
      Last edited by Nightstorm; 04-07-2015 at 01:40 PM.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



    6. #86
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      FENCING

      The fence took a couple of weeks, but it actually wasn’t as hard as I expected (given my experience with everything else associated with this pond), and it had a high effort/reward payoff. I ordered all of the fencing material online, opting for an aluminum fence type that is common in my neighborhood, and matches the fence of a neighbor that I will be tying into. When ordering online like this, you have to manually connect each fence panel to appropriate posts. The main fence panel was already constructed (three horizontal bars connecting all of the vertical bars) and you just pushed posts onto each side of the panel using special metal clips. If you needed a fence panel shorter than the standard length, then you just needed to cut the end of the main panel before sticking the posts on.



      I started with a small segment of fence in my side yard that goes from the side of my house to my neighbor’s fence. This is the least visible segment. I did this by hand to work out the overall process.



      You basically place the gate posts first, since the gate must be totally level, and then work in either direction to the ends. I used a manual post hold digger to dig the holes, then placed each fence panel into the holes, propped the panel up a bit on pieces of wood to get the right height, leveled everything, then added concrete to the post holes.

      It’s a lot of adjusting with 3D levels, but for those of us with OCD, very satisfying.



      Once I had the process down, it was time to tackle the main length of fence. I had decided not to fence my entire backyard, since it has quite an incline on the far side (away from the pond) and really wasn’t necessary. I convinced my wife that it wouldn’t look like a cemetery plot, and I think I was right. This main fence is really just two lengths - running from my deck out to a point near the creek, then turning 90 degrees and running to my neighbor’s fence. I also have a short third segment under the deck.



      I rented a gas-powered post hole digger (big piece of equipment on 2 wheels that can be towed by a truck) for this main part of the construction for a weekend. This basically meant that I had to do most of the work in that weekend. You can’t really dig the post holes in advance with the idea of then putting the fence up over the following week, for example. If you tried this and got off by a few inches on one post hole (easy to do on inclines), then that error would propagate to the spacing for the next hole and you’d quickly find that the holes weren’t in the right places. Instead, I would dig two or three holes, place the fence panels (didn’t necessarily have to add concrete yet), and then go to the next set of holes.

      I started with the gate posts, once again, and this was a bit tricky since the width of the gate was almost exactly the width of the trench I dug in 2013 for all of the plumbing. I had to estimate the trench location and then carefully dig a test hole to get the spacing just right. Once that was done, the rest of the layout just fell into place.




      The hardest part was digging a set of post holes on the far side, near my neighbor’s fence. There’s a swale along that side caused by a sewer drain, and the incline is about 45 degrees right into the neighbor’s fence. The post hole digger can be moved by one person, but it’s heavy. I enlisted my son’s help, but I was quite nervous about pushing it over the hill towards the neighbor’s fence, until my son suggested aiming for one of my trees that was about half way down, in case we should lose control. This helped ease my mind, although we were able to keep control and got all of the holes dug.

      One aspect of the fence that I’m particularly happy with is the gate from my deck. I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how to fence off the deck from the pond, since the deck has a staircase that descends INTO the pond area. This wouldn’t be an issue, except that the deck has ANOTHER small staircase on the opposite side that leads right to my driveway. Without additional gates, a child could climb those stairs, cross my deck, and go down the back stairs directly to the pond. I thought about putting a gate at the bottom of the back stairs near the pond (not feasible because a person stands several steps higher on the staircase, requiring the gate height to be too high, and also running into the problem of the existing (low) height of the stair rails that could be hopped over), at the top of the back stairs (issues with being able to jump around the gate over nearby much shorter deck railings), and even just inserting a gate into a narrow segment of the deck (awkward looking).

      Ultimately, I decided to put a wide gate at the base of the stairs leading UP to the deck. I came THIS close to just ordering this extra gate in the same style as all my other fencing, but I happened to notice as I was placing the order that they also made it in white, which would match my deck railings. As you can see below, this turned out fantastic, as it blends in perfectly. You can also notice that you can’t see the koi pond, or even the fencing, from the driveway. You can also notice the peeling paint on the arbor, but ignore that – it doesn’t relate to the koi pond and is therefore not worthy of my time!



      I’m very happy with how the entire fence turned out, being one of the few elements of this project that is clean, level, and took about the amount of work you’d expect.
      Last edited by Nightstorm; 04-08-2015 at 10:40 PM.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



    7. #87
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      FIBERGLASS PROCESS

      Fiberglass. I put this task off until last, as I really had no experience with it and the materials were somewhat expensive. I went with fiberglass because I couldn’t use any type of liner due to shape and protrusions, ledges, columns, etc. Fiberglass is pretty much the best DIY coating that you can have, although it’s definitely debatable just how “DIY” it really is.

      This is a big pond with a lot of surface area – nearly 1000 square feet when you add up the walls and floor. I paid about $3800 for materials, including freight. That doesn’t count extras like brushes, buckets and gloves.

      I kept reading about fiberglass installation (mostly UK companies), watching videos, etc. etc., and definitely hit a state of “analysis paralysis”. Eventually, as August was slipping away in the filter pit, I realized that I needed to confront the only real temperature-sensitive step (needs to be at least 60 degrees F) in the pond’s construction – fiberglassing the interior of the pond to create a waterproof shell.

      I chose polyester fiberglass resin, the most common type. I went with 1.5 ounce chopped mat for the fiberglass itself and a black gelcoat. I ordered through Fiberglass Supply for a number of reasons, including price and availability of 38” wide mat (as opposed to the common 54” wide, which is harder for one person to handle).

      For those that don’t know, fiberglass basically consists of two elements. The first element is the fiberglass mat, which is a thin, almost cloth-like substance that is suspended inside the fiberglass resin. The second element is the fiberglass resin itself. The basic premise is that fiberglass resin hardens into a hard, fiberglass shell. Many ponds are only sealed with something like this, such as an epoxy resin, and do just fine. However, I’ve seen numerous examples of such coatings developing cracks. While it’s relatively easy to fix such cracks with more resin, you need to step up to full fiberglass to really avoid such cracks in the first place.

      The process is generally to apply a coat of polyester resin to the surface, then place a sheet of the fiberglass mat into the resin, and then apply another coat of the resin on top of the mat. In this way, the mat is embedded within the resin to provide tensile strength, preventing the resin from pulling apart and cracking. Think of it like placing rebar inside of concrete. Now, the fiberglass mat that I chose is relatively lightweight, so my plan called for two layers of the fiberglass.

      The resin itself is an odd beast. You can apply it like common latex paint, but it behaves very differently from paint, and it’s very difficult to get over your paint preconceptions. Paint is simply applied straight out of the can, and dries in several minutes when spread thinly and exposed to air. You could pour some in a cup and do trimwork for hours, watching as each brushstroke dries a few minutes after being applied. Fiberglass resin, on the other hand, doesn’t dry in the air. You can leave a cup sitting out all day and it will still be liquid. Instead, you have to mix a very little bit of a second chemical, a catalyst, to start the curing process. Once you’ve done this, your mixture will harden in about 15 minutes (depending heavily on temperature and how much catalyst you add). So, once you’ve mixed the catalyst into your cup of resin, you can start applying it like paint. But after 13 minutes, the resin in your cup is still liquid, as is all of the resin that you’ve applied to the walls. At the 15 minute mark, it all turns to hard plastic at the same time – the resin that you applied at minute 1, the resin you applied at minute 13, and the resin remaining in your cup. This takes some getting used to.

      There’s no denying that it’s messy. To start with, it’s messy because you really can’t clean out your brush very well, so you generally need to throw away your cheap little bucket and brush after two or three 15 minute “pots”, and your gloves might not last much longer than that. When you’re actually cutting and placing the fiberglass mat, it’s much worse, since the fiberglass comes apart in your hand (especially once your gloves get a little sticky from resin), so everything ends up coated in fiberglass fuzz – your shirt, pants, gloves, measuring cups, etc.

      One misconception that I had until just before I started was how to apply multiple coats. I had thought that I needed to keep some sort of “wet edge” to have the different coats chemically bond, so that once you started you basically had to keep moving in one direction until you’re done. In actuality, you have about two days to apply the second coat and keep that chemical bond. After that, you can still apply another coat, but you need to lightly sand the first coat to create a physical bond between coats, which is still plenty strong for pond usage.

      My process was basically this:
      1. Apply coat of polyester resin to entire pond to act as primer.
      2. Apply first layer of fiberglass – coat of resin, then fiberglass mat, then another coat of resin.
      3. Repeat with a second layer of fiberglass - again with resin, then fiberglass mat, then resin
      4. Apply gelcoat – this is similar to regular fiberglass resin, except that it is colored (I chose black) and doesn’t need fiberglass mat embedded in it.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



    8. #88
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      FIBERGLASS APPLICATION

      So, I ordered my fiberglass material at the end of August. This included a 500 pound drum of polyester resin, three additional 5 gallon pails of resin, 270 yards of 38” wide fiberglass mat, three 5 gallon pails of gelcoat, and a little over a gallon of the catalyst.



      A funny story about buying the extra materials that I needed. In addition to brushes, you need to buy lots of cheap buckets with measuring marks along the side (to measure the resin and mix in the catalyst), as well as long black industrial gloves, goggles, etc. You also need some finer scale measuring cups, as you add just around 1 ounce of catalyst to the typical pot of resin. I had trouble finding this small measuring cup at Home Depot and had to ask. I was getting some really weird looks that I couldn’t quite understand. I didn’t bother explaining about fiberglass, as they wouldn’t understand.

      Now, after several years of pond work, my usual Home Depot attire is, admittedly, very ratty – jeans with holes in the knees and frayed cuffs, T-shirts stained with a mix of concrete and purple primer, etc. But this doesn’t normally get a second glance. Only when I was checking out and looking at my selection of gloves, goggles, and measuring pots did it occur to me that I must look like I’m building some sort of Meth lab. Then, it was funny to recall the conversations with the Home Depot guys: “no, not a normal measuring cup. I need several small, very fine measuring cups – I have to measure small amounts of chemicals.”

      Anyway, the next step was to clean the interior of the pond as much as possible. This was a big job, as the concrete shell had been sitting out for nearly two years at this point. I did the best I could, although the bottom was stained the color of clay. I found that a leaf-blower did a good job of getting the last bits of dust and fine dirt out.




      Once this was done, I applied the first coat of resin. This was a good introduction to mixing and applying the resin, since I was only applying one coat and didn’t have to worry about the fiberglass mat. It went well, particularly once I got to the floor, since I was able to dump a bunch of resin on the concrete and spread it out quickly with a roller. The ledges that I had built into one side were a bit of a pain, as I had to go up and under each one.



      Once that was done, it was time to tackle the main event – 2 complete layers of fiberglass. For this, I needed some help. A co-worker was recommending a handyman that she worked with, but I wasn’t getting my calls returned so I eventually resorted to craigslist. Once I figured out how to post to the “gigs” section and described the help I was looking for, I got a lot of responses. I chose an eager young kid who had done a lot of handiwork with his Dad, and whose girlfriend would be helping as well.

      I hung the big roll of fiberglass mat on a horizontal pipe suspended on blocks. This made it easy to tear pieces off as needed. The resin was a bit more of a challenge, since that drum weighed 500 pounds when it was full. I figured out a way to use a short piece of hose, though, and slowly tilted the drum over to fill up empty pails. By the end, the barrel was all the way on its side.




      The work went slower than I expected (surprise!) and it was definitely a lot of labor. We spent half a day just doing the ledge on half the pond, working up under the ledge and finding our groove with the fiberglass work.

      One thing that I would do differently is the order of the layers. Since I was doing two layers, I basically put up one sheet, then added a second sheet that overlapped the first sheet by a little more than 50%, and kept this up around the walls. In this way, any one spot had at least 2 layers of fiberglass mat. If I did it again, I would put up one layer, then put the second layer up only overlapping by a few inches. Once this was done for the entire pond, I would apply the second layer over the first, with the middle of each layer going right over the seams in the first layer. The reason is that adding the second layer immediately on top of the first layer was unpredictable. Sometimes the “resin pot” used on the first layer hardened before you got to the next layer. This was fine, but required additional wet resin be applied before adding the next layer of fiberglass. Other times, the resin on the first fiberglass layer hadn’t set yet, so it was still wet and you didn’t need much more resin before you placed the fiberglass for the second layer. Other times the resin was setting just as you were putting the fiberglass in place. Not a big deal, but just a hassle.




      I had originally thought we would finish everything in one day, including the gelcoat – my typical optimistic estimate. Having already primed it, it would just be a matter of “painting” on resin and patting fiberglass mat into place, and we could get it done in 6 hours, then let it dry a bit and quickly paint on the black gelcoat. As I’ve said, I’m not very good at estimates.

      Two layers of fiberglass mat usually required four coats of resin: resin, mat, resin, then repeat. By the end of the first day, we had only done a little more than half of the walls. Now, it was the hardest walls, including all of the ledges extending out 4” and requiring the sheets to be laid flat on top of the 16” shelf, bent down vertically for 4”, then folded under the 4” overhang, then down vertically again to the floor. Plus, there was an inherent learning curve in handling the pots that hardened suddenly.

      Fortunately for me, my helpers were available again the next day, a Saturday. I was even more amazed that they were WILLING to come back again, given that the work couldn’t have been what they were expecting based on my description in the ad, since I clearly didn’t expect it to be as much work as it was.

      The second day was much better in terms of speed. We were able to finish the 2nd half of the walls relatively quickly, both due to experience and the lack of an overhang to complicate the process.

      When we got to the floor, we had a hiccup. I thought the floor would go quickly and easily, as I had experienced when applying the primer coat of resin. Unfortunately, we learned that you couldn’t just dump a bunch of resin on top of fiberglass mat as if it were a concrete floor. The mat basically dissolves when doused with a lot of resin, and then wants to stick to your roller brush. This made it very hard to apply, and created bubbles that I will probably have to grind out this spring. Fortunately, this problem was recognized, and it went better past that first 8’x8’ area.




      If you’ve done fiberglass, you know that the pictures above don’t show a very good job on the floor. The white that is showing is basically fiberglass mat that hasn’t been treated with enough resin. Fortunately, this is the second layer of fiberglass mat, and the first layer looks better since it was placed in resin that was spread properly on the hardened primer. I don’t know exactly why we had such problems with the second coat. Possibly the floor was going faster than the walls, and this resulted in laying the 2nd layer over the 1st layer before it had set? Or it was harder to get the right amount of resin because the walls were self-leveling (too much would just run down) and the floor was not?

      In hindsight, I probably should have added more resin to the floor before moving on to the gelcoat. But after two days, I was ready to be done with the mat, and my helpers were gone. Plus, I reminded myself that the concrete shell itself was ALMOST waterproof, plus I had done a good job on the resin primer coat (which should have made it completely waterproof), plus there were TWO layers of fiberglass on top of that, plus I would be adding yet another coat of resin in the form of the gelcoat.

      In any case, the next day I sanded the entire pond myself. This needed to be done to remove any sharp protrusions in the fiberglass, and there were a number of them. If the fiberglass mat sticks to the roller even a little bit as the top layer of resin is added, then it pulls up to create needle-like extensions that need to be sanded down to protect the fish and ensure a smooth shell for the gelcoat. This took two more days, then I moved on to the gelcoat itself. Like the resin primer coat, this went on much quicker and more easily than the fiberglass-mat-stage, and was extremely satisfying. There’s no question that it looks very sharp with the deep black coloring.





      Whenever I show pictures of the pond to people, they typically don’t get a sense of the scale. Here’s a similar pic that shows me standing next to the column.



      All in all, I was very lucky with the weather. What was going to be two days turned out to be closer to five, and the rain held off the entire time. I was also lucky to find help that was open to new experiences (sure - it’ll be just like painting!) and flexible enough to spend an unexpected Saturday continuing the torture.

      The pond looked very nice once it was filled up, but this quickly led to weeks of chasing a leak.

      Last edited by Nightstorm; 10-28-2015 at 12:02 AM.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



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      THE LEAK

      With bated breath, I filled the pond up about halfway, carefully measured depth, and let it sit overnight. Unfortunately, I measured a leak equivalent to 1.6”/day, which would be over 300 gallons per day. I then lowered the water to below the TPR penetrations (~14” deep) and didn’t observe a measurable leak. Logic therefore told me that the leak was in the TPR pipes.

      I had one very suspicious TPR pipe. A piece of rebar had been driven through the Dreampond TPR flange of one TPR during construction, so this particular TPR was just a smooth tunnel through the concrete, slathered in fiberglass resin to a glassy finish. I thought I had made it watertight, but clearly this must have been the leak. So, I valved off this pipe from the filter pit, put a patch of fiberglass over the hole in the pond, and put a new application of gelcoat over this – it was as if the hole had never been there. I filled the pond just above the TPRs and waited overnight. It was still leaking, but only half as much.

      Let me stop here and note that finding leaks is very hard – I don’t want to bore you with all of the attempts and measurements that I made that October. It turns out this wasn’t the leak at all, but the rate of leaking was instead simply related to how high I filled the pond. The higher I filled it, the greater the pressure, the greater the rate of leaking. Let me jump to the relevant facts.

      I subsequently tested all of the pipes, including the bottom drain pipes and skimmers, by putting bladders into the pipe on the pond side, filling the pipe with water from the filter pit side, and watching to see if the water level dropped in the pipe. None of the pipes showed any sign of leaking when under the gravity pressure of a full pond. That was actually a huge relief, indicating that none of my pipes had been broken due to settling dirt over the previous year+. The problem had to be somewhere in the pond shell.

      I carefully reapplied fiberglass and gelcoat all around the three bottom drains. I thought perhaps it was leaking along the edge where the bottom drains were set in the concrete, so I sanded the edges down, then carefully applied two more layers of fiberglass and a fresh application of gelcoat. It looks nicer now, but there was no impact on leaking.

      I drained and filled the pond several times. I thought I had found the leak once, when I quickly drained it and noted water tricking INTO the pond in one corner. Fiberglassing over this had only a modest impact on overall leaking.

      I ended up lightly sanding the walls and putting a second coat of gelcoat (two extra coats in some places) on the walls. The floor of the pond was dirty and I couldn’t quite get it to dry out in the rapidly cooling fall weather, so this wasn’t re-touched. Again, all of this helped, but didn’t quite get it. Over time, I was ready to accept some leaking, since I had to do water changes anyway, but it had to be reasonable.

      Eventually, I was satisfied with measurements taken when the pond was ½ full and ¾ full, so I filled it all the way up. At this point, I could see water actively seeping out around both skimmers. If you remember, I had placed the skimmers and packed regular Home Depot cement around them, which is pretty porous. However, I had been careful to apply lots of polyester resin primer around the skimmers for the primer coat, and carefully overlapped the fiberglass itself into the mouth of each skimmer. When I saw the water leaking around the skimmers, I tried using drops of food coloring to trace the leak within and around the skimmers. I didn’t find anything, but I dutifully applied another thick coating of gelcoat all around both skimmers anyway. This had no effect.

      As you can imagine, this has been quite vexing. This is where I stand today, basically done except for finding the source of this leak. At this point, having given it a lot of thought over the winter, I can think of the following possible answers to the riddle of this leak.

      1). There are still leaks on the inside of the pond, somewhere near the skimmers. The water is coming OUT around the skimmers, so the leak in the pond’s shell must be near there, right? One of the skimmers is in the corner, right up against the walls that have the extending ledge. It’s possible that there is a leak up under this corner, perhaps? I’ve re-fiberglassed there, but perhaps I missed something. The other skimmer, however, is in the middle of a regular wall, and I’ve applied fiberglass around this skimmer already specifically trying to catch this leak. I don’t think this is the problem.

      2). There are leaks along the seam between the skimmer and the overlapping fiberglass, inside the mouth of the skimmer. I’ve seen UK videos where they sometimes run the fiberglass up to the edge of the skimmer, not overlapping, and they just caulk the seam. I, on the other hand, lightly sanded the mouth of the skimmer and feathered the fiberglass inside when applying, and I haven’t seen the slightest hint of a leak when dropping food dye into the mouth of either skimmer. This theory doesn’t seem very likely, but would explain how the water is leaking through all three layers – gelcoat, fiberglass, and base primer coat – since the water would be going AROUND all three layers in the mouth of the skimmer.

      3). There are leak(s) along the 2” “inner” ledge. The two walls that have the skimmers in them don’t have ledges sticking out into the pond. Instead, they have a minor 2” ledge recessed into the wall to hold future stone coping. Fiberglass was applied over this shallow ledge, but probably left a modest channel all along this ledge. If water is leaking in one or more places along this tiny edge, it could be feeding a channel that goes right to both skimmers. What makes me doubt this possibility is that I’ve already applied a second coating of gelcoat all along this edge (I did find some holes at that time), and this theory still wouldn’t explain how so much water is getting through the primer coat, which was applied directly to the concrete and shouldn’t be creating a channel.

      4). Bottom of the pond – This is a theory that occurred to me over the winter, and is the one that I think might be the most likely, although it is the least intuitive. I’m basically wondering if water is leaking out of the shell along the floor (which hasn’t been re-coated), and is then working its way up between the fiberglass and the concrete shell. Since the concrete shell is almost waterproof by itself, it only leaks a little bit, but once the water level rises up to the skimmers, this water under the fiberglass finds a much easier exit and it leaks profusely. It’s like putting a plastic cup with a hole in the bottom of it inside of a plastic cup with a hole near its lip. When you fill the inner cup, it leaks out the bottom into the space between the two cups, but then has nowhere to go. Only when you fill the inner cup up to near the top does the water that’s between the two cups start pouring out of the outer cup near the lip, even though the actual leak in the inner cup is at the bottom. The main problem with this theory is that it doesn’t explain how so much water is getting through the resin primer coat that I applied around the skimmers before applying the fiberglass. However, I did find a few small leaks where water was coming back into the pond, so the primer coat obviously isn’t perfectly watertight.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



    10. #90
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      PLANS

      My plans at this point are to attack the floor.

      Once the temperature has warmed up, I’ll be able to drain and dry the floor of the pond. I’m going to grind down the bubbles in that one section that we messed up, the initial 8’ x 8’ section where we poured the resin on. I’ll then apply two more layers of fiberglass mat. Then I’m going to add two more coats of the gelcoat resin. I’m pretty sure that the main walls are good at this point, as they are smooth and I’ve already added several additional coats of gelcoat. I’m also going to add yet another coat of gelcoat to the entire top 12” of the pond, which will include the 4” ledge extension on one side and the 2” recessed ledge on the other. Obviously, I’ll pay special attention all around the skimmers.

      If this doesn’t work, then I’ll add yet another coat to the main walls, which will result in having re-coated the entire pond.

      Beyond that, I don’t really have a Plan B, since Plan A basically involves re-coating the entire pond. I suppose if that doesn’t work, I could try cutting a groove around the face of the skimmer and then caulking this, like they do in the UK, to remove the doubt that water could be leaking around the fiberglass that was feathered within the mouth of the skimmer.

      If this plan doesn’t work, I’ll just have to reassess at that point.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



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    11. #91
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      Ive often wondered if you could glue sheets of abs plastic to the walls/floor, then weld the seams.

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      Unless you transfer all the weight of the media to the sides of the StakPaks evenly, they will crack ?
      Last edited by vipertom1970; 04-07-2015 at 06:52 PM.

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      Wow, great update! The "meeting" couldn't be more accurate.
      The tpr plumbing in the pit was a freaking work of art... I bet those pictures will be passed around as "the way to do it" for
      years to come.

      Quote Originally Posted by vipertom1970 View Post
      Unless you transfer all the weight of the media to the sides of the StakPaks evenly, they will crack ?
      They look very close to mine and I haven't had any problem for the several years mine have been in service. They're really solid even with the
      holes drilled in them.

      Good luck with the leak! I hope you're able to get it handled.
      --Steve



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      Quote Originally Posted by vipertom1970 View Post
      Unless you transfer all the weight of the media to the sides of the StakPaks evenly, they will crack ?
      Like Steve said, the trays are pretty sturdy, being reinforced by that built-in "webbing" all across the bottom. I haven't read about too many problems, especially if the units are kept out of the sun. But I guess I'll find out!



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



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      All I can say is Wow. From the Pit to choosing fiberglass. Very ambitious. Good luck chasing the leak, I've done that recently and found one of my 3" skimmer pipes blew loose at a connection.
      Jerry

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      - Sherry & Greg

      21' x 11' x 5.5'
      9000 gal


      Our pond build HERE


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      You promised us pictures of water in the other thread and I was hoping it was going to be ones of water not just in test tubes...
      --Steve



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      no problem
      Last edited by T9D; 11-12-2015 at 12:08 PM.

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      Long 2014 Winter

      As you can imagine, being so close to completion - yet having to wait until spring to work on the pond - made for a long winter. Even as the snow melted and temperatures began to rise, I still couldn’t address the leak in the fiberglass as it needed to be over 60 F to cure properly.

      Most of the family tolerates this hobby, but my oldest son has always been moderately interested and has looked forward to this mythical “outside pond” that I continually planned and worked on. This is a picture of him in 2008 when I was preparing to build my garage tank – very excited. He enjoys interacting with the koi, especially now that they’ve gotten big.



      This is a picture of that same son this spring studying by the still-empty pond – pretending it was done? He heads off to college this fall. How sad is this?

      Last edited by Nightstorm; 07-04-2015 at 11:45 AM.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



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      The Leak 2015 – Revenge of the Fiberglasser
      Summary – Leak Fixed!

      Diagnosis of Problem – Still not exactly sure, but it looks like I originally applied the coats of Fiberglass Gelcoat too thinly. I was treating the paint rollers as if I was applying latex paint (smooth coats just thick enough to uniformly exhibit the color) rather than as a means of getting a relatively thick coat of resin onto the walls.

      As I noted earlier, my plan for fixing the leak was basically to apply another coat (or two) of the black gelcoat EVERYWHERE since I didn’t know the exact location of the leaks. As I carefully inspected every square inch of the shell, I saw a few problem spots that needed to be patched (using a small piece of fiberglass mat and resin), but I also noted areas that had a number of tiny pinholes. I hadn’t been that worried about these earlier because I knew that behind a pinhole in the black gelcoat were two separately applied layers of fiberglass, which were on top of a resin primer coat, applied to a parge coat of cement. However, SOMETHING was leaking, so I was determined to plug all holes.

      I started with the walls, once again because the floor was a dirty mess that had a couple of larger problem areas, and I wanted some real progress before tackling the hardest part. The first step was to lightly sand the walls so that the fresh coat of gelcoat would adhere to it. Remember, you only have about 48 hours in which to apply a second coat of resin / gelcoat and still get a solid chemical bond. After that, you have to sand the existing coat to facilitate a physical bond.



      Next, I applied little hand-sized patches of fiberglass and resin to any spots that looked suspicious. After I drained the pond, there were a few spots that trickled a tiny amount of water (so little that it was evaporating before getting to the bottom of the wall). There were also several particularly-dense grouping of pinholes. I had planned on a half-dozen patches for the worst offenders, but ended up applying dozens once I got rolling. I paid special attention to the seam under the 4” ledge overhang as there were a few places where we hadn’t done a very good job of applying the fiberglass mat upside-down on the underside. In a few other spots, I used my angle grinder to remove any funky / bubbled / gapped spots so that a fresh, flat fiberglass patch could be applied.

      Once that was done, I applied another coat of gelcoat. As noted above, I purposefully put on a much thicker coat this time – not so much that it would drip, but after “painting the resin on”, I didn’t go back over it to smooth / stretch it out. I could tell by how much more gelcoat I was using that this was a better coat, and I couldn’t see any pinholes left behind as I progressed. I ended up sticking with just one additional, thick coat on the walls after patching.

      In the picture below, you can see some sanded walls (with patches of gelcoat over fiberglass patches), some freshly gelcoated walls, and the mess of a dirty floor that was waiting for me!



      Once that was done and I felt like I was making some progress, I tackled the floor. The biggest mental obstacle was that the floor was a dirty mess after a long winter. There was dirt/mud everywhere, and trying to get the caked dirt to come off with a wire brush was exhausting and not as effective as I had hoped. Overall, it was frustrating.

      Finally, I had the inspiration to try mopping it up, instead of brushing it off. My plan was to have a hose pouring water into the pond on one side, and my utility pump removing the water on the other side, while I scraped the (hopefully looser) dirt off underwater. This worked like a dream. I actually started after a rain had already filled the pond with a couple of inches of muddy water, and was elated to find that the dirt basically came off the fiberglass underwater with just a stiff broom. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as the wire brush - I just kept sweeping muddy water towards the pump. The water got cleaner and cleaner, until it was effectively clear. I then stopped adding water, pumped out the rest of the water, let it dry, then did a final sweep for a thin coat of dust, blowing it out with a leaf blower.

      Once clean, I followed the same process on the floor as I had with the walls. There were a few much larger areas that I needed to grind/cut out and replace (one was about 3’ x 3’), and a larger number of “problem spots”. There were several places that would ooze water (where the gelcoat was very thin) when I stepped near them – I didn’t know if this was just a tiny isolated pocket of water that wasn’t actually leaking outside the pond, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I knew the floor was going to be worse than the walls, since I hadn’t been able to apply a 2nd “band aid” coat last fall due to the dirt/mud that was present even then. For this reason, I applied a solid two coats of gelcoat to the floor this time.

      I ended up going over every square foot of the pond with fine-grit sand paper, just knocking off any tiny bumps that the koi might use to rub against if they’re flashing. Let me tell you, that black pond gets hot when you’re on the floor on your knees running your hands across the hot black fiberglass!

      All in all, I ended up applying another 15 gallons of gelcoat, basically doubling the original amount. The following picture shows the pond with fresh coats. It’s fundamentally the same picture as last fall, since you can’t see that the coats are now twice as thick, but there you go.



      When I first filled the pond up to test it, I still measured a small leak in my first 12 hour test period. It was only about 25% of what had been leaking in the fall, though, so this was still going to be acceptable – this represented about half of what my water changes should be anyway, so I could live with it. Last fall, water was actively pouring out around both skimmers – now, one was bone dry and the other was slightly damp (I think).

      Surprisingly, the leak appeared to lessen with each subsequent 12 hour testing period. In hindsight, I think the “leak” that I was seeing may have been partially because I had a number of pipes that were still filled with air, and these may have been slowly filling with water (not leaking). All of my TPR valves were closed when I filled the pond, so the pipes must have been the equivalent of putting a straw in a glass of water with your finger over the end of the straw. The slightest seep of air out of the pipes would result in the water making its way up the pipe, lowering the pond level and looking like a leak. Same thing with the air lines on my 3 bottom drains - could the water have been slowly seeping through the air diaphragm and up the 1” air pipes, mimicking a leak?

      I was working on the bakki shower while doing these tests, and at one point had to open a connection that “removed my finger from the top of the straw” – I can only imagine my expression when I heard the threatening noise of the air and water rushing up all of those TPR pipes! I had to re-measure the pond level afterwards for a new baseline, but by then the leak had become negligible.

      In any case, within a few days the leak had completely disappeared. I’m sure part of this was also the “bits of gunk plugging tiny holes” process. Happily, my issue quickly became overflow from rain showers, rather than even worrying about evaporation. I need to play with the design to make the overflow happen in my filter pit so that I can manage the water out an appropriate drain (rather than over the lowest point of the pond wall), but there’s no rush for that.
      Last edited by Nightstorm; 07-04-2015 at 11:56 AM.



      -- Chris

      Nightstorm's Pond Build

      "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -- Hubert H. Humphrey

      "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change" - C. Darwin



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