How to build a raised wooden patio pond by Pondguru

Hello there. In this video I'm going to put a pond in this deck behind me. It's a wooden deck and I'm going to install a pond roughly seven foot by four foot by approximately three foot six to four foot deep. Now there is an existing pond under here. There used to be a patio under here so the existing pond is roughly seven by four by approximately 18 inches deep. So I'm going to I'm going to lift up a few of these deck boards, find out exactly what I've got underneath. And then cut out this decking section to match up with what I find underneath. Now that I've got a couple of the deck boards off, you can see the edge of the original pond here. So here we've got patio, here we've got the original pond. There's a load of rubbish from the construction of the deck shoved under here so it'll all be to come out. See the original inside of the pond here? So I'm going to expose all of that and then clear out the muck from underneath here. There was a lot of chopped up bits of old Deccan. Old decking supports, smashed up paving slabs, all sorts of rubbish under here, but I've removed that. And now I'm going to cut out the shape of the pond, which will match up with what's underneath. But first, I need to put extra supports in all the way around, because if I cut this out, these sides here are going to collapse. There's no supports here. Right, I've measured the size that I need for the supports. I've cut loads of supports, and now I'm going to pre-drill them. twice in each one and then fix them all the way around the edges to support the deck before I cut out the shape of the pond. That's the supports in all the way around that's the support this lot here and now got it marked out where I need to cut I'm going to cut out all the way around the edge of the pond up here now that all the supports are in I'm going to cut out this deck here surrounding me where the pond is going to be the pond is actually going to be half under the deck and half above the deck so i need to cut this approximately two inches further than the pond under here that'll give me space to put these fellas up over to support the edging and maintain constant width from here all the way down to the bottom of the pond now that i've got this cut out i'm going to put two by two supports in all the way around just below the decking And also on top of the existing patio, that will support the hardboard that I'm going to fix on the inside of the pond. That's the wooden frame in, all the way around the inside of the pond. We've got one on the top, fixed to the decking, and also fixed to the supports that support the decking. And we've got one just above the original patio as well, resting on the patio so it's totally solid. And this is going to take the hardboard. When we put it on the inside of the pond there's a triangular piece of patio slab on each of these corners supported on a breeze block and secured with what looks like concrete so that's going to have to be broken out if I want a nice square sided pond. That's the pond totally dug out now. Made a shelf at this side and also at this side and I made those shelves there because there's two nasty lumps of concrete here and over here just out of shot. There's pipes go from the house so I don't want to get into those pipes at all. Don't want to move the concrete, leave it where it is. I've boxed it off. This is all filled with soil, packed down. It's absolutely solid. This is finished off, just waiting for the hardboard to go on here. That's pretty much it for the woodwork inside the pond until I start to build the sides up. And then these sides hopefully will extend down here. That'll be with the hardboard and that should create the inside of the pond. The latest task with the pond was to build four frames out of dressed 2x2, which is pressure treated. You go all the way around the pond. I'll get a view of that later. But they're all screwed together and screwed down to the existing deck, screwed together at the corner. So you've got like a double thickness corner. And then on the outside, they're going to be clad with 6 inch by inch and a half pressure treated decking all the way up here. And then on the inside... This insulation is going to be packed into here and we've allowed I think 18 inches between these two to marry up with that. So all we need to do is just cut it to size, slot it in and then fix it with the hardboard on the inside. Just one quick note about the corners, this is the long side the decking is going to be screwed in here, this is the short side and because this frame is joined onto that one This deck board is going to straddle these two frames and be screwed in there just to really make the corner very solid. This is just a quick detail of the last stage we did which was to put insulation in here all the way around and then the next stage is to put some hardwood plywood on the inside. That's a lovely smooth surface for the liner. It's going to be screwed on all these screws are going to be countersunk. So there's not going to be any rough edges, nothing to snag the underlay or the liner. That's all the sides fitted with the hardwood plywood. So that's made a really nice, strong, smooth finish. And now we're going to put this underlay in. Now this is polyester underlay and this will protect the liner from any sharp edges which may still be around the sides or the bottom. I don't think there is any. We've done a pretty good job of this. So this goes in now. And this will be fitted all the way around everywhere where the liner's going to go. Underlay will be underneath it and we're going to seal it together with a heat gun. That's the underlay in now, all stuck together with the heat gun. And around the edges we'll put some of the decking that I originally cut out of this hole, fixed that with screws all the way around the edges, just to stop the underlay being pulled in when we're rolling the liner out in here. That's the liner in the pond now and we're filling it up. There's already about 18 inches of water in. Because it's got the shelves either side, getting it in neat was a little bit more of a task than if it just had ordinary straight sides with no shelves. That's pretty easy to do. Once you've got shelves involved, the liner needs to be pulled in all different directions to try and lie flat. We've got it pretty well done. There is folds in the corners, which aren't as good as we normally would have them. But the pressure of water will keep this liner pressed down. And here's a quick note on the liner that we're using this is one millimeter thick firestone rubber very tough liner I think in the US it's called 0.45 not quite sure what that equates to it probably is a some measurement of an inch or something but in the UK and Europe it's measured in millimeters and that's one millimeter thick that's most of the water in which has pulled the I filled the liner in. We've pressed all the folds against the sides and to aid the folds being tight against the sides we've put the capping on and as we were screwing it down we were pulling this so it went really tight. So these are screwed on apart from that one because at this side we're going to cut a couple of holes in the liner here and put special fittings on to bring the water out from the pump to the filter and back into the pond from the filter back to the pond. We're going to let this settle overnight and when we come back tomorrow we're going to go around with a Stanley knife under here and cut off all of this excess liner. One more thing that we've done when we've been on doing this capping and waiting for the pond to fill up is we've brought armoured cable up from here into this three switch box which will supply the filter and also the pump in the pond and we've taken that underneath the decking under the steps there and it pops up here Into a junction box, goes through the wall, into a fused spur on the other side. To get the water from the pond into the filter, and from the filter back to the pond, I'm using these fittings here, which go through the liner. It's basically a two-sided thing. You cut a little hole in the liner, screw the two sides together, and it creates a waterproof seal. You then attach a pipe on this side, and on this side as well. So we've got one pipe, which will come from the pump into here. feed into the filter in this box that I'm standing in and then the filter will feed back out into the pond. I've got these fittings in now all the pipe works connected filters connected everything's pretty much done so now I need to cut this liner off which I'm going to do by pulling this tight and just snipping it with the scissors then I'm going to put this top back on chuck the Tuck the pump in, set it away and check for leaks and hopefully there won't be any leaks. This is the pump. It looks huge but it only pumps 4,000 liters an hour and it pumps that 4,000 liters an hour. The running costs are only around about 40 pound a year in the UK. It's only 40 watts. That's all the power it consumes. Five-year guarantee. It's called Oase Aquamax Eco Premium 4000 and I always use Oase pumps in the jobs that I do. Excellent quality and low running costs. That's the pond finished. I've already explained about the pump. I'll quickly show you the filter, explain how it works, how to clean it out and then give a quick scoot around with a video camera, let you see the pond from all angles. Now ordinarily I wouldn't hide the filter in a box, but the dog that lives in this house is very keen on chewing things, so it's all boxed in because the last thing we want is for the dog to start chewing the pipes and then the pond pump itself So this is a simple removable lid and in here we've got an Oase filter clear 15,000 pressure filter. Water comes in from the pond over the UV light which kills the algae. It then goes through a series of foams and back out to the pond. I like to use these because cleaning them is really easy. It takes me about a minute to show the customer how to clean them so that's pretty important. And when you do come to clean it, all you do... Is just drag this pipe out. This goes on to the drain attachment. On the end of this pipe there's a cap so when you want to clean it all you do is unscrew this cap, lead this somewhere into your garden like a border or a drain, somewhere where you can drain waste water to. That's it, led away into the bushes there. Now I don't need to switch anything off. I can leave the pump running, leave the UV running. All I need to do is turn this dial on the top and instead of the water going back to the pond it starts to come out into the bushes. So now I just use the handle, pump it up and down, like that, give it about a dozen pumps or so, and what that does it squashes the foams out and it actually washes them in the pond water, so you don't lose the beneficial bacteria that live on the foams. There's a clear hose tail here so you can see the muck coming out, and when you've given it about a dozen pumps, say maybe a minute's worth of pumping, and this has started to run clear after maybe another 30 seconds or so, you turn the dial back, it starts coming back out into the pond, You put the cap on the end of the pipe, tuck the pipe away and that's it. That's the filter cleaned. That's the filter cleaned. This top goes back on and the filter stays protected. That's the filter box. That's the three switch box. We've got one switch for the pump, one for the UV and a spare in case they ever want to put an air pump in. You can see the fittings coming through the liner here. they're below water surface the water will go by about another inch or so but they're totally hidden means you've got no pipes coming over the top of here which keeps really neat straight lines around the pond just about see the pump in the bottom there that would be its summer position right on the bottom in four foot of water in the winter you lift that pump up and put it just under where the water comes back in and what that would do would cycle clean water but it wouldn't disturb the deep water in the bottom where the fish were overwintering i always get asked this question so i may as well answer it in the video instead of in the comments the dimensions of the pond are approximately seven foot long four foot wide by four foot deep there's roughly two foot above the deck and two foot below the deck The gallonage of the pond is approximately 525 gallons. It's not four foot all the way down because we've got two shelves, one on either end. That eats into the volume a little bit. And 525 gallons is just short of 2,400 liters. Hope you've enjoyed this video. Any questions, just stick them in the comments box. Click the like button if you've liked it. Share it, whatever. Check out my other videos, there's hundreds of them all in playlists and if you've liked what you've seen and are not yet a subscriber, subscribe. Thanks for watching.