Pond build in SoCal

[IMacBevan]

Hi all,

I have been a long-time reader on the forum and am finally starting on my dream koi pond build.

The first pond was a roughly 670 gallon converted stock tank which did well when my koi were nisai and tosai. It was built on a raised platform and run through two 55-gallon barrel filters (sediment tank and bio/mechanical filter) all DIY.

When the koi outgrew that I converted a 4000 gallon above ground pool for them. I had taken down an old Koi Pond from a neighbor who had shut their pond down and I inherited all their equipment. The pool was plumbed through a Ultima II bead filter, Matala 75 w uv and air was driven by a Matala 40 L feeding an air bladder on a Rhino 2 Retro bottom drain. Only thing I purchased was the pump.

If I can find them, I will post pictures of both of them when I get a chance.

Anyways. I am super excited to finally be working on the new pond. We own 5 acres here and just completed building our new house a year ago. It has taken us some time to get all the landscaping done and other projects that one usually gets stuck doing with a new house build.

This pond will be an above/below ground pond roughly 12' wide x 24' long x ~ 57" deep. The idea is based on an above ground pond build I found on Russell's water garden web page. My rough estimate is it should land out somewhere between 9500 and 10000 gallons. It will be about 3' below grade and the remainder above.

I preordered the filtration from Sacramento Koi. It is their Advantage plug and play 10000-gallon system with the added grow tower which directs the water change waste into our drip irrigation on our rose garden. They were super helpful and communicative throughout the whole process. Here is the Filtration built and assembled on the filter pad.



I finally got the go ahead to start the actual dig. Our first job scape all the gravel down to bare dirt.


Next phase was to hire the backhoe to dig a bulk of the digging as our soil is clay based mixed with sandstone, which had recently been compacted again, and again and again with the house build.

[IMacBevan]

I am still new to posting here. So I am breaking this up, perhaps more than I should...

Unfortunately my backhoe driver wasn't the greatest and left us with a lot to hand dig. Thankfully I have a couple of awesome guys who work for us here on the ranch and they hand dug the remainder of the bottom drain trench.



Once I had an idea on where the pond actually was going to lay out, I began to build the filtration plumbing




Now I am starting to lay out the posts and walls of the pond. Posts are 4 x 4 x 8' pressure treated on 4' centers, walls are 2 x 12 x 12' and 2 x 12 x 8'. Downside is having to hand dig the post holes



That's as far as I am right now.

More to follow if there is interest.

Sorry about the sideways photos, not sure how to fix them. Hopefully someone has some hints!

Ian

[*Ci*]

Hi Ian,
I merged your threads into one, so it is easier for people to follow along (and retitled it to remove the “Part 1”). Just post your updates to this thread, if you will. Looks like an exciting build! Looking forward to seeing it to completion.

[coolwon]

Auger's are neat and tidy.

Might be a useful tool being of a small diameter and ideal to compact tightly around the posts once set

up.

[IMacBevan]

Thanks!

[spkennyva]

Looks like the beginnings of a nice build. All the best moving forward!

[two_wheeled]

Wow. That's going to be amazing!
Love the photos. Send more as you go.

[EmeraldDragon]

Looking good so far


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[janivan]

looking good man

[trapper]

You can buy an auger with a 6" bit for 200-300 bucks at Harbor Freight...

[dafoodangel]

look great so far, cant wait for the finish product

[IMacBevan]

Sorry for the delay in updates, I have been slammed in trying to continue the build along with battling one of rainiest winters we have had here in SoCal in quite a few years. In this post I will be showing the ribs and walls going up. You will notice that in some of the photos the courses are 5 high. After analyzing it for a while, we decided to drop it down to 4 to fit into the space better. All the ribs are 4 x 4 ground contact pressure treat footed about 18" in the ground. All the walls are either 2 x 12 x 8' or 2 x 12 x 12' attached with 3" stainless steel screws.

[IMacBevan]

Now I am starting to work in some of the pond infrastructure and plumbing.

Here I have the skimmer, autofill, general fill and some of the return bulkheads installed.


Here is a side shot of the return loop bulkheads


Here the Autofill is mounted along with its associated plumbing and the plumbing for the general pond fill line.


This photo shows the finished box install around the autofill and pond fill along with the plumbing feeding into both. You can also see the overflow protruding through the box.


Here I have mounted the skimmer. You can also see I have an electrical quad box mounted as well


Here I have the box finished around the skimmer and the plumbing done.


Here is a overview of the Skimmer, Autofill, general fill, and electrical box mounted.


Here is the same view with the boxes built and attached.
You can also see the filter return loop plumbing at the base of the wall. There are 6 return jets, 2 on each long side and one on each short side.


So far here is the main backbone of the plumbing. In this bundle is the electrical run, the fill/autofill mainline, air and the skimmer return line to the filter.


Here is some of the filter work showing the plumbed waste line feed, air line, and electrical.


More detailed plumbing pictures showing some of the lines feeding in and out of the filter. At this point next step is to start tying in the bottom drains.


Here is the waste line heading out to drain off. Also seen here is the incoming feeder line for the pond fill/autofill.

[delv]

Updates?

[IMacBevan]

I'll get some out hopefully this weekend. Thanks for the interest!