Pond Update - Autumn 2015

Are you up there? This one's going out to Jeff in London. Hope you enjoy it Jeff. Have a good one. Sorry for my long absence. It's been ages since I've put a video out. There are reasons behind that. Two of them. One of which is that since mid-August my business has just gone through the roof. I don't know why but it's trade just seems to have doubled. It's almost as if at that point someone just shone a flashlight on all the stuff that I'm selling. Announced to the world that, hey, this fella sells some good stuff, buy it. I don't know, something's happened. I've been ridiculously busy and I just haven't had time to make any metal detecting, fishing videos. I've hardly been away from my place because I work from home. The other thing is, I had an operation which put me out of action for a good few weeks, preventing me from lifting or digging or pretty much doing anything heavy and physical. As soon as I started getting over that, I attacked the garden. Actually, that's the third reason. So we've got business, operation, and garden. It's been about 20 years since I've done anything of any sort of magnitude in the garden. No, actually, I tell a lie. Maybe it's 12 years, because it was 12 years ago we put the pond in. It's been a long time anyway. And my house is surrounded by woodland, which needs maintaining. So I've been maintaining that. I've really opened up the view outside my place because the trees were starting to encroach on the house so I've basically been climbing trees and sawing all the branches off with a chainsaw where I can but some of the things were very very high and I had to climb up and actually use a little hand saw. I've done the same around the pond except there I used secateurs it's taken me ages but it's opened the place out it's really It allowed a lot more light to get in, although you wouldn't believe it now because it's just been dark for so, so long. Very dark, misty, crappy weather, really. I'll show you what I've done out the front of the house as well. I'll pan round and let you have a look because it's really opened the view up and I've got a beautiful view. When I get up in the morning and look out of this big picture window, this is what I see. As you can see, it's pretty overgrown all the way around, but I've gone from about there. All the way around to this platform, really thinning out round the sides. It's made a hell of a difference, really opened up the sides of the pond. So I'm going to continue all the way around, and I'll let you see what it's like once I've cut the vegetation back, because the pond will look gigantic. Now instead of cutting the willow down that's up the side of my path, that runs from underneath the log cabin, I've actually bound it into each other, really tied it in to make it like a very, very strong retaining wall here. You can see it's all twisted and tied and knotted into each other. I haven't cut any of it down. It's all just tied into each other to really retain that bank side. Here we go. This looks very different to the last update. I've absolutely scalped it all the way around. It's taken me ages. Absolutely ages, but it's been worth it. It's really opened it out. The runner I hear was starting to wilt. So I've chopped the leaves off, but I've left the stems. That allows me to put the leaves over the stems and then cover this with grass clippings and leaves and all sorts of stuff that I've gathered up around the place. Really make it nice and warm for the winter and it's going to come away better than ever next year. This is the point where I had my floating island attached to so whilst it was floating it wasn't in the middle of the pond so I've chopped that off. I've really taken a lot of the vegetation off the top of it and I set it free and it's been floating around for the last few days. But it's settled underneath my boathouse, so in the next update I'm going to drag it out into the middle and give it some sort of anchor so that it actually stays out in the middle of the pond and that'll be an awesome place for ducks, especially when it's planted up with suitable plants. Now there's some of the stuff that I've cleared up from around the pond. I've dumped it over the side here. Tons and tons of it. Unbelievable amount of vegetation. But that will create an awesome habitat for birds and mice and all sorts of things. Now, on a lot of these trees, I've reduced the branches, taken them off to about 8 to 10 feet high. Same with these ones as well, let a bit more wind in, really open it up, give these fellas a little bit more light, and it's looking pretty good. Certainly makes the pond look bigger. It looks gigantic now. See the amount of vegetation that was here? This was way up here. There was iris and all sorts way up here, bulrushes. Oh, God, there was all sorts of stuff. And it's all been cut with secateurs. Here we've got some of the willow that I've cut down. That'll be alright for a good few weeks just in a bundle there and I'll do something with that. I don't know whether I'm going to make another trap or maybe make a camp for the kids or something but it will get used. The floating island's stuck underneath my boathouse so I'll drag it out and let you have a look so you can see what it's like. There you go. This thing is like a duck house. It's got a little runway there for them to get into. What I'm going to do, I'm going to plant that up with some bog bean, water forget-me-not, things that'll make a lovely raft and anchor it out in the middle of the pond. And that'll be absolutely awesome. It has the added bonus of having a huge wire cage underneath it. Because I actually built it on top of a wire pallet made out of tubular steel. So it's an excellent place for fish to hide as well. So in the next episode, I'll go out in the boat and put that out. Here we've got a massive tank. This is underneath my log cabin. This is going to be for a secret project that I will explain the details of in the next part of the pond update. Because I haven't got very far on with this at the moment. I've literally just got the base in, a really, really solid base. I've put this 8 foot by 2 foot 6 by 2 foot tank in here. It's drilled, so it's basically going to have... Well, I'm not going to explain it, but it's going to be good. I'm not going to explain it. So I don't know exactly how it's going to work yet, but it is going to be part of an awesome project. I've also got a new pump for the pond as well. It shifts a ridiculous amount of water. 40,000 litres an hour. Not sure what that is in gallons, but it's a hell of a lot. Weighs nearly 20 kilos as well. It's not on at the moment, so I'll haul it up and let you see it. It's an absolute belter. Look at the size of this fella. It's an Aquamax Expert 40,000, feeding out through a 2-inch pipe. And I bought it on eBay because it had a cracked cage and a broken base as well. I've just fixed that by drilling holes in the cage, cable tying it together, like literally sewing it up with cable ties. And I've cable tied the base back to the pump and it was as good as new. But unfortunately there was a problem with it and that's probably why I got it so cheap. When I first turned the pump on it was awesome. It was literally like a fire hose. You know, you couldn't control it, you had to brace yourself. It's that powerful. But after a few hours of use, it went off, then it started again, and then it went off again. And when I stripped it down, I noticed that the impeller was knackered. And anybody who's had any experience of pond pumps knows what size most impellers are. Well, check this fella out. That's the impeller for this one. And you can see, it's well knackered. I don't know what happened, but this just exploded. And this fella cost me the best part of, well actually it cost me over 300 quid for a new impeller. But this is an absolute monster and I certainly don't regret putting a good impeller into that monster pump. Under here we've got the 16,000 Aquamax going so that's what it's doing. It's oxygenating the water well, it's shifting plenty of water, doing a pretty good job. But that green pipe that's the one from the big pump and what I did there I drilled a hole, a half-inch hole and I stuck a bit of hose pipe in. So as the water's flying out of here, it's dragging air in. When I switch it on, you'll see exactly the effect that that has. It's called a venturi. That's really, really oxygenating the water. It's doing an excellent job. Now hopefully right in the middle of that picture, you'll be able to see the air being dragged in. You can see the hose pipe coming in the top, the water flying past it, going from right to left, and air being dragged in. That's what's creating all the bubbles. I'll just give you a quick... Scan of the pond from up a height. This is from the cabin looking down into the pond. See here I've taken the fence off. It goes around these platforms. Fence has gone all the way around here It's it just really opened it up nicely. This is the view I have from my kitchen when I'm washing the dishes. It's not bad So there you go. That's what I've been doing and And... I'm pretty pleased with this. I've really wanted to get stuck into this garden for a long long time I've had the opportunity and I've done it So now, when I get some free time, I'll hopefully be able to get out metal detecting, and just get out and do a few bushcraft videos as well, get back into the swing of things. I do miss making videos. It's a huge investment of time to create something like this. And also, it's a huge investment of time to maintain it as well. So that's why I've been out of action. I love having a garden like this, but it has taken years and years and years to get it to this state. And there's still things to do around the place, so it's something that's never going to be finished. Just like a house, my wife deals with the development of the house, I deal with the development of the garden. It's a very good relationship. And the fact that we've got no neighbours and I can pretty much do whatever I want here, makes for a really happy life. Makes for a happy life for the wildlife that this garden attracts as well. And it also makes for a happy little black cat, because he likes to chase and catch the wildlife. Which doesn't go down too well with the kids, but that's what cats do. He's in Nirvana here. If you've liked this video, give it a thumbs up and share it. Very much appreciated. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or any of them social things. I don't bother with them. I cannot be on with that. So if you want to share it anywhere, be my guest. Thank you very much. Thanks very much for watching. I'll catch you next time.