Fish pond construction near Newcastle by Pondguru

Hello there, this is our latest project. It's a medium-sized fish pond with a cascade just behind us. We've had two or three days here already but we haven't filmed anything yet because it's been quite windy and this camera is not very good in the wind. So this is the, I think it's either the third or the fourth day and I'm going to briefly explain what we've done up to this point. Not sure how clear you can see this but there's a bit of a shelf around there. There's a shelf around this side but that pond is roughly four feet deep maybe it's a little bit deeper and it was actually dug by the fella who we're doing the job for he's done a great job of it when we got here on the first day all we had to do was just mess around a little bit with the hole just to get it nice and smooth get the shelves nice and sharp because it had been raining quite a lot since he dug it but we got that sorted out put the underlay in which is a thick polyester that protects the liner from being punctured from underneath and then we'll put the liner in and this is a millimeter thick rubber liner firestone rubber liner now it's only when i come to edit the video that i find out i've forgotten to tell you what that stuff is between the wall and the liner that's it there that's called alpha grog it's a ceramic filter media and what we've done with this is we've filled in all the way behind the wall at water level and below water level fill in all the gaps between the stones with this filter media and as the water is flowing around the pond it'll go behind the wall what this stuff does it supports bacteria just like other filter media and all the way around the pond will act as a filter so hopefully that should really improve the filtration in this particular pond and here i'll just give you some detail of what we've done here the pond was dug out to here We dug an extra trench in here. All the way around, we put a concrete footing in there. And then we built a small wall off that concrete footing. So when we bring the underlay and liner up, we'll sandwich it between this side of the wall and this side of the wall. And one of the very last things we'll do is to put a big, random sandstone slab on here. All the way around from here. All the way around. to there and then we're going to build this mound up with big rockery stone which we've got over here we've just brought that this morning and if you notice here we actually have built a block work wall this is just to retain the cascade just to stop the soil spreading out you won't see any of this lot it's all going to be hidden we've done a similar thing with blocks in here as well we've built blocks up on the inside Just to create the rough shape of the cascade and just to make sure that there's no settlement or spreading of soil. We haven't got anything cemented in yet, this is just lying in loose and today we're going to build up this cascade and build up the rockery. We're also going to connect this filter up if we get time. We've got a switch box here which is going to go on the fence. There's an armoured cable goes in the bottom and the armoured cable is going to run all the way back. To a socket on the wall behind that water butt. So the armoured cable will come in to the box. That'll feed out to the filter, which has got a UV light in. And it'll also feed out to the pump. I don't know whether you can make it out. The pump's sitting down there. You can just see the sticker on the top of it. That's an Aquamax Premium Eco 8000. And that feeds up. The pipe just comes around this deep area. Up to here, we've got a 90 degree bend on the pipe there. Just so that it comes up nice and sharp. goes through the wall out here and leads to the filter. There's also going to be one coming back from the filter up here we're going to join it onto this one that goes through the back of the wall and that'll come in the top of the cascade. Now we have missed the first few days of filming so if you want to see how the hole needs to be dug and how the liner and underlay gets put in you can watch how to build a fish pond which is a complete Pond building video that I did about six months ago and I think it's about 45 minutes long that runs you through every single stage of building the pond. This one is only going to be from this point onwards but it's going to pay particular attention to the electrics and the filter which is an area that I didn't do much filming on for the last video. Here where the pipe comes through the wall which feeds out from the pump we're digging a trench which is going to go all the All the way back to the filter and that's going to take the pipe that's feeding into the filter it's also going to take two pipes that are feeding out of the filter it's going to take the pipe which feeds to this cascade and it's also going to take a drain pipe so that the waste can be pumped up here and behind this wall when the filter needs to be cleaned out it's also going to take the electric cable as well which runs to the pump and over the top of those pipes and electric we're going to run this stuff which is a it's like a like a roll of protective Very hard plastic, just means that if anybody's digging in the border, they're not going to go through and puncture the pipes, and they're certainly not going to get to the electric cable. I've just laid a bed of cement down underneath this bottom spillstone, so I've dropped it back on top of that bed of cement. Now what I need to do is ensure that the front of this stone is level. That looks about right. Yep, that's about right. So providing I don't stand on that or bump it, it should stay level. But I will check it before the end of the day, just in case it needs to be adjusted. And then either side of them, I'm going to put some stones here to match in with the wall. But they're a little bit higher. So when they're cemented in, it'll retain the water and force it over this spillstone. There's going to be one here, and there's also going to be that one there. So it'll force the water over the end of the spillstone. That's the bottom spillstone in there. These are cemented in. See the cement in there? It's going to lose a little bit of water over the sides of there, but I want it to come off the sides of here and right across there. I want it to be more like a splashing sort of effect, not a very controlled sort of curtain of water. That's the protection for the pipes going in there, and then that's going to get filled in. This is the Cascade, a little bit more progressed. Built up the sides here with a nice big rockery stone. There's a change in level here, so I've gone up with two layers of small wall and stone. And then here is going to be another spill stone. That's looking at it from the front. That's the spill stone in there. I just need to fill these little bits in with stone and then build out from here and here and work my way back. That's the stones set up just a little bit higher than the spill stone, so they should force the water over the end of the stone. This is a little bit further up the cascade, so now we've got one, two, three and a half steps. Not far to go, nearly at the top. The rockery's been built up a little bit. It's starting to look a bit more like something now. See, we've used kind of a dry stone wall in effect underneath the spill stones just to tie it into what's going on around the back of the pond here. Of course, all of the cascade is cemented together, so the water's going to be forced over those stones. This is up at the very top now. Come up, we've got a little letterbox, sort of a thing here, almost like a little cave for the water to come out of. And we're going to be covering this lot up. Not sure with what yet. Possibly something just like that, cemented in. But in here we've put the pipe over the top of the liner and it's pointing into here. We've got a little reservoir and then it'll flow out underneath and come out of here. So when you're looking in here and all this is capped off, this is just going to be black with water coming out of it. You're not going to see the pipe at all. That's the top of the cascade all filled in. It's a little cave where it's coming out. So when you look in from the far side, it's just pitch black in there. And this bit. is totally hidden there's the wall that the liner comes up the outside walls here just about make out the breeze block there and this is going to be filled with soil so you'll be able to plant in here the plants will hang over there and cascade around there we haven't given it a test run today either we'll do that when we come back but um i'm expecting it to look pretty good so now all we've got to do is put all this capping on and when that's completed it'll look something like that We still need one up here, but we'll just put this one in because we had one piece of capping in the van. That'll go all the way around. You can see how that blockwork wall is totally hidden. And there's little hints of walling there, there, there, just to tie that in with what's happening around here. The cable's laid loosely to supply the three-switch box. We've got the armoured cable coming out from under the fence. This is going to be the moment of truth. I've just connected up all the electrics there, I'll show you that in a minute. We're going to switch the pump on now and see what the cascade looks like. Hopefully, it'll look good. Right, set it away. Yep, it's coming. I think that's a nice effect off that bottom stone. That's kind of what we were aiming for. We didn't want it just a curtain of water. It looks much more natural. That's about it. It's just ripping it down from the top as well, isn't it? Aye, yeah. Yep, that's a good effect, I like that. It suits it, good. Now that we've confirmed that the cascade's running fine, it's just a matter of laying all of these big random sandstone edging out around the sides, try and get those roughly into position, and then we're going to cement them on. That's all the edging roughly laid on here now. It's not cemented at all, it's just laid on dry. So now we're going to start from this end, lift this stone up, cement it on, and work our way all the way around the pond. And believe it Believe it or not, this process has taken It's taking a canny while but it's so important. Doing it like this, putting them on dry, saves so much time. You know you've got enough stone and you know it's going to go down quickly and efficiently once you get the mortar mixed. This is the filter, it's a FiltoClear 15000 from Oase. Water comes in here, goes over the UV light, through a series of foams, this thing's about that deep in the ground, goes through all the foams. Water comes back out up to the cascade clean. This pipe here joins onto this tap and that leads away up to the top of the garden. And when you want to clean this thing all you do is turn that, open the valve, pump the handle and after a few weeks of having fish in the pond the water will be mucky that's running out of here, be very dirty. You pump the handle maybe a dozen times or so, let the water more or less clear, shut off the tap. Turn that back to there and the water starts coming down the cascade again. Really easy to maintain. When we put the pipe onto these connectors here, we always use black electrician's tape stretched on before we put the clip and that just stops any minor leaks developing here. The power comes from a three switch box. We've got pump, filter and lights and the little transformers for the lights. I've fixed onto the fence, above soil level. I would say 90% of the time when the lights fail in the garden, it's because of the transformers. These are only IP44. They need to be kept well up out of the wet, out of the muck. The electrical feed, which comes into this box, runs along underneath this fence. It's actually a two-skin fence. It's got boards on the front and on the back. So we've ran the cable up under here, right along. So it's out of sight, pops out here, runs under the path. Comes back up, round the corner, up into a box, and then this box has got a flexible cable which feeds in underneath and it's hardwired into this socket. So they've still got use of this socket when they need to use something outdoors, they don't need to pull the pump supply out, that's there permanently fixed. On the rockery there, there's still a load more plants to go in, but we've put some as a backdrop, there's some ferns up there and also some rough grasses. All the edging stone is now cemented down. And within two or three days you'll be able to walk on that. It'll take a bit longer to go properly hard but it'll be walkable in two or three days. We have also put one or two plants around the inside of the pond as well. Along here and along here we've pushed some brook lime into the walls. The water in the pond's still got to go up probably about another two or three inches because we dropped the level for when we were cementing these slabs on. So it's still got to come up a little bit These plants will form like a raft over the surface and that'll be great for the fish to get under. There is a set of three lights in here, there's one there, one here and one there, all shining up at different angles on the cascade but because the water's still a little bit mucky you can't see them. There's another light here, it's a three LEDs and that shines up straight onto the rockery and on a night you should get dancing patterns of light all over these rocks. Hope you've enjoyed this video, thanks for watching, please subscribe if you're not already a subscriber, and I'll see you next time.