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  • Results 1 to 11 of 11

    Thread: Raised pond - 3 feet above grade?

    1. #1
      Rhizome is offline Junior Member
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      Raised pond - 3 feet above grade?

      I considered a koi pond almost three years ago. I was very ambitious. Life happens, so it was put on hold. Later, I down sized it to 2/3 of the original volume. Some other more important things happened, so it got put on hold again. In the mean time, my wife and I landscaped most of our backyard. Recently, we built a pergola and have plan to put a deck underneath. There is space left on either side of the pergola for a small pond and a good size filter pit. Now, this pond is 1/5 the volume of the first planned pond. It's going to be a square, 10' x 10' x 5'. Since the deck will be 1' above grade and we want 2' between deck surface and pond edge, this makes 3' raised walls on the remainder three sides of the pond. I haven't seen any picture of pond wall this high. Anyone has any picture to post? Or point me to a thread with pictures? Is this going to look good? I'm worried that the 3' high walls aren't going to look appealing!

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    2. #2
      Pond James_Pond's Avatar
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      Here's one very similar to what you're describing. This thread has both "do's" and "don'ts".

      https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showth...ion-Opelika-AL


      steve

    3. #3
      jimfish98's Avatar
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      I am not sure of any like that here or in general. As for looking good, its a matter of what you do with them. If you leave them as plain block, it might not be that appealing. You could paint them for a slight improvement. Best option a lot of us would likely choose is to add tile or stone to the sides to vastly improve the look. In my case I used a quartz stone tile.
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    4. #4
      rainblood's Avatar
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      Mine is 3' over 3' under. The orginal plan was 2/4 but I couldn't dig anymore
      Makes fish interaction more fun IMHO.
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      Last edited by rainblood; 10-31-2014 at 10:50 AM.
      -Rain

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    5. #5
      avorancher is offline Senior Member
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      I would suggest you find a height that makes it comfortable for you to interact and watch your koi. Mine is lower and acts as a sitting wall, but a wall high enough to lean on would do the same. Desks are usually around 30" and are comfortable with a chair. Not sure what a typical bar is but I would guess around 36" and bar stools would be easy to find.

    6. #6
      Rhizome is offline Junior Member
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      Thanks for the pictures, Rain.

      I would add stone to the side of the walls that are above ground.

      When we first considered a koi pond, we visited the idea of a raised pond. That was abandoned quickly because it didn't seem to fit with the landscape (actually, lack of it!). Recently, we started back on this. I have been reading koiphen for the last few years, picking up points here and there, learning the filtration art. Then, I saw a post by Norm about a small pond the same size as the one we now want. Long story short, he suggested a raised pond, which we haven't thought about since few years back. Now, a raise pond makes total sense given our existing landscape. There are members of our families that have physical limitations, so a raised pond will make it easier to play with the fishes.

      Plan is with cinder block on footing, vertical and horizontal rebars, mortar the joints, and concrete base with a 4" BD/skimmer to filtration system, then returns to pond via TPRs and a waterfall. I'm modeling this out in Sketchup to get an idea how it looks.

      Maybe I will add a viewing window to one of the wall. A big maybe (the complexity is a bit intimidating)

      I'm reading the pond build thread by Bekko.

    7. #7
      rainblood's Avatar
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      Stacy has a very clean formal as well which has likely inspired many of the formal ponds here...

      https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showth...ion&highlight=
      -Rain

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    8. #8
      Rhizome is offline Junior Member
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      I've been reading Stacey's build thread. His pond and filtration pit arrangement is similar to mine. I think there are plenty of ideas I can borrow from his build.

      For those of you who has the profidrum filters, where is the water level once it is installed? For instance, if I raise the pond 30" above grade and water level arbitrarily set at 28" above grade, where does the profidrum sit height-wise? I am considering the smallest of the profidrum. After all, this planned pond is about 3500 gallons in volume.

    9. #9
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      Having a 30"+/- raised pond is a neat way to interact with the fish……


      Name:  IMG_1783.jpg
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      As for the height of the ProfiDrum, the Eco 45/20 would extend approximately 8" above water level and 17-1/8" below water level.


      I love a good red.

    10. #10
      pond happy is offline Senior Member
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      Having now had both an at-ground level pond and a raised pond, I cannot imagine returning to the at-ground level. It's just so much easier to interact with them at a comfortable height.

      Here is a link to my build: https://www.koiphen.com/forums/showth...elcomed!/page9

      Mine is 26" tall (3 concrete blocks tall plus 2" of coping), and it's no problem at all for people to sit on. In addition, the coping stone is 12" wide, and so it makes sitting easy and comfortable without the fear of falling in. I arrived at this height by testing sitting heights of various people to find something that a shorter person could still hop up onto and yet a taller person (like myself) wouldn't have to burn-out their knees getting down to it.

      For covering the concrete block, I really enjoyed using the ledgestone product. It's real stone, but arranged in panels - and construction adhesive is more than acceptable to apply (much faster, much more holding power, a bit more expensive). The nice advantage of having a wall face that is divisible by 6" is that ledgestone won't need to be rip-cut to go on... it works out perfectly.

      But you could also apply a nice layer of dyed parge too... that looks quite sharp and it's not expensive.
      Last edited by pond happy; 11-04-2014 at 01:49 PM.

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    11. #11
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      Or you can just use split faced block. It comes in many different colors.
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