How to Build a Fish Pond and Stream / Cascade - Complete pond building video by Pondguru

Hello, welcome to part one of the newest pond build. This is going to be a fish pond, approximately four foot deep. It's meant to be three foot deep, two foot deep, and then a foot deep. Unfortunately, it's another job that has been dug by somebody else. That pile of soil that came out of the hole is meant to be right up to the side of this pond as well for the cascade. Unfortunately, we're going to have to move that by hand, so it's right next to the pond. But it's not going to take too much doing. Because this pond's a fairly simple fish pond, we've just got a shelf around here, approximately six to nine inches deep. It's been cut out reasonably well with a digger. Then we've got a four-foot hole in the middle here. It's supposed to be three foot, and then two foot, and then going up to a foot, but it's just kind of a long slope, so that'll be to sort out, but it's not the end of the world. And then there's that big pile to shift, so we'll get a video as soon as we've done that. That's the side, just about sorted. Cleaned up these shelves, one round the side there, nice clean sharp edges, we've added steps, so we've got one here going down, one here going down, one here going down and there's another one under the water here which we're going to pump out now. We've started building that heap up a little bit, all that stuff in the front of the heap came out of the hole, that should have really come out whilst it was being dug, just shows you how much more stuff should have come out. We've still got the heap to sort out and the bottom of the pond to pump out. To get that done, we'll stick the underlay in. That's it pretty much pumped out now. There's a little bit of water still in the bottom, but it'll be right. You can see the extra two shelves that we had submerged before. It doesn't really need those shelves in, I suppose, but it just gives you somewhere flat to put lilies. So if you buy lilies from the shop, they generally need to be stepped down, so you'd maybe put them here when you first bought them, leave them a week, step them down, step them down, then finally put them in the bottom, you know, after four or five weeks. So that's the hole ready. And now we're going to put the underlay in. That's the underlay in now. Even though it's windy, it's staying buttoned down in position. We've fused all the parts of underlay together with the heat gun and put weights around the edges. Stop the wind getting underneath and lifting it all out like a parachute. This is the liner. It's one mil thick rubber. And we're just going to roll that down into the pond, long ways on, and then open it out. That'll do because we want to put that up to cascade a little bit. And then we'll just pull it this way. That's the liner draped loosely in the hole there now all we've got to do is chuck the hose in start it filling up and as it's filling up we're going to shift this muck pile to where it should be see the steps here bang bang bang as the water fills we'll go around and we'll pull the sides and so on and get the folds where they want to go but it's really something that has to be done as it's filling up there's no point going in there try to make everything look neat now because the water will push it wherever it wants to go. I've got the water going in here from the hose and I've just been in kind of putting the folds where I think they want to go. And then once the water comes up, it'll press those folds into the side and they should be pretty much unnoticeable. Pond's just about full now, perhaps four to six inches before it reaches the shelf. I want to keep the shelf dry, so I'm going to cement these stones on around this shelf, possibly later today. This is the cascade dug out of the soil pile. Basically just made Various steps at different angles, cut back into the existing soil here just to take the liner from the pond so then the cascade liner will lap over that. The important thing to note is the height of these sides is much higher than where the water is going to be. Notice that both sides? Way higher than where the water is going to be. So you're going to have your water coming over here and over here. The liner will go right up these sides and even with a bit of splashing there's no way the water can leak. This is it looking down, water's going to come over here, drop, turn 45 degrees, drop down a series of steps back to the shallow end of the pond. Quite important that it's going to the shallow end, this end, because your deep water here in the winter that's where your fish are going to hibernate so they're going to be reasonably warm in that deep bit. If your pump's in here, it pumps the warm water out, chills it, and it freezes the pond, knackers the fish. So in the winter, instead of the pump being down here, they can move the pump into the shallow end and just circulate clean water, keep the filter alive, and most importantly, keep the fish alive as well. This is part two of how to build a fish pond. This is your kind of average Joe's sort of pond. Dig a hole, put the muck in a pile, build a cascade in the muck pile. So this is going to show you how to build a cascade properly, whether it's in a pre-made muck pile or whether it's in an existing bankside. The principle is exactly the same. Now that the cascade has been dug behind me there, the first thing I'm going to do, after I've trampled down the soil a lot to make it very sturdy to support the weight of the cascade, is put some underlay in. This is polyester underlay, the same as we used for the pond, very thick. If you need to overlap it, you just use a blowtorch. seals it together really good stuff it prevents the liner being punctured from underneath uh meaning that if you have any gravel or bits of smashed up glass or whatever providing they're not too sharp they will not go through here basically protects the liner from being damaged from below you're putting quite a lot of weight on here ultimately you've got the underlay then you've got the liner you've got some pretty big stones, cement, cobbles, there's a lot of weight on it We haven't got underlay. And you've got slightly dodgy soil, all that weight is pressing on the liner, and it's pressing on things that could possibly pierce the liner, so this is a must. Even on a small cascade like this, I would always use this good quality underlay, and always use 1mm rubber liner, exactly the same as the pond liner. Okay, that's the underlay in. See how it's worked into all the corners? There's no bagginess to it, because the liner's going to go on top of that. And if you have baggy underlay, you'll have baggy liner. So really you lay the underlay in just as if you were laying the liner. Nice and tight, secured around the edges so it can't blow back in and it's about time to put the liner in now. That's the cascade liner in. Laps over the top of the pond liner. Very important that. I've seen loads of jobs where people have actually put the cascade in first then lapped the pond liner over the top. Of course the water just disappears straight underneath the pond liner and you lose water wholesale. So the pond liner which is underneath this cascade liner comes to about here and then you've got the cascade liner coming down over the top and it's it's overlapping where you've got a 90 degree drop so i've got one two 90 degree drops so the water can't get back up worked it in quite neatly but this turn at the top wasn't too neat so i cut the liner and again i've overlapped it you can see the the overlap bit there it overlaps the bottom part of the cascade line the bottom part of the cascade liner comes up So roughly here. Then you've got approximately a six inch drop. where the overlap from the top liner comes over the bottom liner so there's no way the water can creep on underneath the liner or anything. You can see how high the sides are compared to where the water is going to be so you're not going to get any splashes going over the sides, you're not going to get any water disappearing under the liner either. So the two most important things overlap the liner properly, have the sides of the liner higher than anywhere where the water could ever be and after that it's pretty much up to you how you finish it off. but I'll show you how I finish it off. Here I am at the bottom of the cascade and I'm only going to use three different materials, well three different types of stone anyway. We've got nice flat sandstone for the base of the cascade and also the spill stones where the water actually comes over. We've got big rockery stone for the sides of the cascade and then some nice sized cobbles for filling in all the gaps between the big flat stones and the rockery stone and all of that will be held together. by just an ordinary cement mix. I generally mix it six to one. You don't want it to go off too fast. Reasonably stiff. You don't want it too sloppy, otherwise it's gonna make a right old mess. So the first job we're gonna do is basically just put down a line of mortar down here, line of the sand and cement mix, and then push some cobbles into it. This ultimately will actually be underneath the water, but just doing that just to hide the liner. First job, once the cement's in and smoothed out, Put one of the edging stones on, mark the side of the cascade, then I'm going to start pushing cobbles in, working my way back from the edging stone. Now it's fairly important that these cobbles are pushed into the cement randomly. The last thing you want to do is put really concentric lines and patterns and so on, because that just doesn't happen in nature. Got a little bit of cement on there for the next edging stone. I always take care to push the stones in until they actually hit the bottom. The mortar is only about an inch and a quarter thick, so by pushing them all the way in, you get a good grip around the stone. Once the first layer of cobbles is in, and the two edging pieces are cemented in place, I then put another two edging pieces a little bit higher up. The spill stone, which will probably be just at water level, but it will disperse the water quite nicely. Then I'm going to work my way back from that. So the next thing to do is to put two more edging stones. A few cobbles, another spill stone. Repeat that process right to the top of the cascade. Towards the end of the afternoon, and I'm kind of running out of stone, so I'm going to stop there for the cascade. I like plenty of stones to choose from, so I'm going to make that do for the day and bring some more stone with me tomorrow. It's kind of coming together. Starting to look all right. I've got almost up to the bend. Particularly pleased with that stone. It's got like a little cave underneath it, I think the water should come underneath that. I can certainly get my hand underneath it so the water should come underneath it as well. Just going to add a few more stones either side here, just here and here because the ones I've got left are a little bit too big for the cascade and I'll pick this up tomorrow morning. You'll be able to see that the sides of the cascade look a lot neater now. Cut the liner off, burnt the underlay off. I find it easier to burn it off instead of cutting it because it's a hell of a job to cut that stuff. The cascade is pretty much finished now. It obviously still needs all the soil. Pulling in around these stones, but I'm going to wait until the cement goes off before I do that. Got up to about here yesterday, and this is the bit that's been added this morning. I've allowed a little cavity down here for the pipe to come in. Water should come out into here, through the cobbles, down over the spillstone, which I hope I've got level. Time will tell. And flow down, back into the pond. Quite a nice cascade. Very nice stone, which helps, obviously. Everything's cemented together, see the cobbles are just pushed into the cement for a couple of days it should be ready for a trial run, but ideally I like to let it go off for about a week before actually setting it away for good. We've added a few more cobbles around the sides, a few more big stones and from here onwards all the way around to here we're gonna have a dry stone wall with big sandstone slabs on the top just to make this side of the pond accessible because whilst these Big rockery stones look nice, and you can't really stand on them with any sort of safety. They are cemented in, but they're not very level. Obviously, we've got a pump going in here, so the pipe's going to come down just underneath that overhanging lip of the stone and go out to a filter. That's the hole for the filter. I'll show you that in one of the future parts. And the blue pipe there is actually a conduit. It's blue alkathene pipe, just water pipe. It goes under this path through these heathers, And it comes out here. There's going to be a switch box on this wall, eventually, when the electrician comes. There's also another conduit that runs just behind here, again, going back to the garage. And that one is for the electric supply to the pump. So we'll chuck the pump in, throw the cable through the conduit, wire it into the switch box, same with the filter. You can see the pond isn't full yet. It's got to go up another four or five inches before it even hits the bottom of the stone. And then from there the water should come up halfway up the stone when it's filled up totally. That means you won't see any of the liner. We've cut the liner back around the pond as well. All of this behind the stones will be filled in with muck from the heap and it'll really blend it in nicely. But again I don't want to do that until the stones are kind of set. Welcome to part three of how to build a fish pond. In this episode we're going to be using sandstone which we got from the quarry yesterday. Like that and that. Basically we've hand selected it so we've got two flat surfaces so when we're building with it it's easy to build ones on top and as long as it's got one decent face we can use it. So we're going to be building that around the inside of the pond where the big rockery stone isn't and that'll give us a nice solid side of the pond to stand on. So we've got the rockery stone around the back edge of the pond mixed in with a few cobbles and so on which are cemented in. And then we're going to bring out a very short dry stone wall, basically just two, possibly three stones high, all the way around the inside of the pond. This will actually be mostly underwater, so we're going to take that all the way around there to meet up with that rockery stone. We may put one or two big rockery stones in the middle of it, I'm not quite sure, we'll see how it goes. And on top of this wall, we're going to use nice, big, flat sandstone pieces, which should come kind of around here. So they'll straddle the wall and the grass. We'll obviously have to dig out certain sections to be able to fit in these stones, but it'll be cemented on the top of the wall. The good thing about building a wall like this is, when it's cemented on the top, it's going to be very secure, perfect to walk on. It's not going to fall into the pond. It's going to make a really nice edge. And also, you've got all these gaps behind the wall. With it being a dry stone wall, you've got little gaps between the stones where frogs and newts can get in. And excellent places for amphibians to hibernate in the back of here. This is a handy trick. We've got a conduit that's going to supply the pump. Buried through the lawn, under the paving slab. And it comes out here. There's going to be an electric box on the wall there to distribute the power. But obviously the cable, because it comes like that, doesn't stand a cat and mouse chance of going through there. So we've got a thick earth cable. Pretty much inflexible sort of stuff. Very thick. We've stripped the pump cable down, and we've tied that onto there, so when we pull from the other end, this should pull the pump cable through with no problems. That's it. Jobs are good. That's the pump and filter cables put through. One goes through here, one goes through here, back to the garage where the electric's going to be. We've got the dry stone wall finished around the inside. As I said before, it's only a tiny little wall. And the water should come at the very least halfway up that wall. So now all we need to do is just put some big flat stones around here. So we've got big flat stones to go around here. And they'll be cemented on. We're busy putting the edging stones on now. So we've plonked it on here, on top of the wall. Obviously it's not sitting level, it's leaning in towards the pond because the surrounding land is higher than our wall. So we're plonking it on, marking it by cutting in with a spade. Then we'll flip that stone off. Dig out this area here that we've marked down to about two inches or so roughly a little bit a little bit deeper than the thickness of the stone uh then we'll put mortar in which is sand and cement mix in here and across the top of the wall and then we'll put this big stone back on top of that mortar and that'll secure it to the wall and the ground. So this is the first hole that we've dug we had the stone on here cut out what we needed to cut out and now we're ready just Drop a bit of mortar on and flip the stone back into position. After getting halfway around with the large edging stones all cemented on we decided that it would look a little bit too much if there was big edging stones all the way around there so we actually demolished a bit of the dry stone wall and instead of the big edging stones we're actually going to put these rockery stones in just to kind of break it up a little bit. It would look a little bit too much if it was all just flat stones there. so by putting the big rockery stones it'll kind of tie it into what's happening on that far side with all the rockery stone there so with these we're trying them in position first whipping them out putting a bed of cement down and laying them on the cement exactly the same as we did for the big flat stones that's the edge of the pond done now obviously the water's still low it needs to come up about another eight inches or so to cover that shelf but looks a little bit better adding the big rockery stone in between the big flat lads Breaks it up, gives it a bit more interest. We've sorted out the soil pile a little bit as well. Took a lot of the grass sods out of it that the digger driver had seen fit to put in there. And we've dug a trench for the water. So pump will be in the pond. Pipe will come out into here, through the filter, back out, and follow this trench up. And it'll loop down over the top of there and into this hole. And it hopefully will come out there and nowhere else. And it'll go down the cascade and back to the pond. So the next job is to connect up all the pipe work, run it up here, bury it, stick the plug on the pump and try it. That's the pump connector there with a stainless steel clip to keep the pipe on. Ordinarily you just chuck the pump in at the furthest point away from the cascade to set it away, but because we've got quite harsh winters up here I want enough pipe on the pump so that it can go here in the summer, in the deep bit. And in the winter, it can be moved up to here, just below where the cascade comes in, so it doesn't disturb any of this deep, relatively warmer water in the winter. So I'm going to chuck it in the shallow end and gauge the length of the pipe to the filter from that distance to the filter. Right, the pump's connected, filter's connected. Obviously, you can still see the pipe there. I haven't put the pump in its final position. It's literally just chucked in to test the filter's working, i.e. it isn't leaking. And also... to test what the cascade's like. So until we actually get it pumping and the water coming down here, we haven't filled in any of this just in case there's a hole in the pipe. Although I doubt it because it is like a super reinforced pipe. Needs a hacksaw to cut it. It's not the sort of thing you can cut with a pair of scissors. So this is the moment of truth. We're gonna switch on and you'll be the first to see it running. It's never been set away before, so it'll be as much of a surprise to you as it is to me and hopefully it'll work. One's level. It's a bonus. Everything seems all right. Water's going underneath that stone nicely, which is what I wanted it to do. Creating a little bit of a pool just there. Again, I wanted to do that. I'm concerned about the level of the header pond, so I'm going to check that. That's probably the most important thing, because if the water's disappearing back over, it's not a good job. And there's plenty of height there. Looking at that, there's probably about three inches or so, so it's in no danger of going over. That's pretty good. Pleased with that. Obviously the pond has to go up quite a lot, so it'll cover up these cobbles down the bottom here And it'll also cover up the liner that's still showing around the sides of the pond But things are heading in the right direction We're gonna switch this off now, give the cement another couple of days to go off before we set it away proper in part four Which will now be tomorrow's work We're gonna be filling in the trench where the pipes go also finishing off around the sides of the pond Topping the pond up And we're going to bring some nice big rockery stones, similar to what we've used in the Cascade, to plant in either side of the Cascade and around the mound to create a bit of a rockery. Thanks for watching. Hello there, welcome to part four of how to build a fish pond. This is basically just a short summary of how we finished the pond off. It was more or less finished in part three, but I'll run through what we've done just to give it the finishing touches. Obviously now the pond is full. You can't see any of the black liner around the edges, so it looks a lot better. Water kind of comes halfway up the rockery stone there, giving it a nice natural edge. This will allow the water to drop, maybe two or three inches or so, before you start seeing the black liner around the sides, meaning that you don't have to top it up every week in the summer. It'll go a long time between top-ups. We brought a load more rockery stone this morning, and we've basically just dug it in. Around this mound here, we've taken a lot of the grass out of the mound, because unfortunately the dude that dug it out, instead of removing the grass first and putting it in a pile and then digging all the soil out, he decided to dig the whole lot out together and just clash it all in one heap. So we've had a hell of a job digging all the grass out of here. There will still be grass in here, so I've advised the folks I'm doing the job for just to leave it till the spring. We're in the back end of the year now, it's late October. Just leave it till the spring, wait till the grass comes up, spray it off, and then plant it. We did put that plant in there, it was actually grown out of the heap of rockery stone that we brought. This is the pile of grass that we've dug out of the pile whilst we've been shaping the heap. There will be at least that amount still in the pile unfortunately. Walking around the back of the pile you can see the odd rockery stone plugged in there. We'll just kind of put them in randomly. The last thing you want is something that looks contrived. Obviously the pile of soil is still pretty rough but it's been raining overnight and to wander around on there would just make it like a total quagmire, it would be a hell of a job, so I'm going to leave it for a week or so, come back, plant the pond up and rake all this, hopefully when it's dry and give it a really neat finish. Cascades looking nice, quite a natural sort of effect, although we have obviously put spill stones in there, it falls quite well and really oxygenates the water quite nicely. Cut the liner and underlay back really neatly around the sides. The last thing you want to have is liner hanging out, it just looks blatantly obvious that you've lined it. Obviously all of these stones are cemented in so they're not going to go anywhere, safe to walk on and climb over. All the stones in the rockery aren't cemented in, they're just literally dug into the ground. When you look at the path of the water coming Coming down the cascade, you can see by the bubbles, It flows right along this back edge in the shallows. It's exactly what it wants to do. The pump's sitting in this deep end here, moving water into the filter back down the cascade, and it's arriving right at the far end of the pond. So the water has to travel all the way from here to here before it gets pushed back into the filter and down the cascade, which is great. We have left enough pipe on the pump to be able to move the pump from here to here in the winter By having the pump In the shallow end where the cascade pours in means it'll keep the filter alive in the winter but won't disturb the main body of water where the fish will be hibernating. The filter that we've used in this job is from a German company called Oase. They make very good pumps and filters. I've also used their pump and this filter is a FilterClear 30,000 which is probably a little bit too big for this pond but there is going to be koi going in here from the lady's previous pond so I always like to go slightly over on the filtration. There's an integrated 55 watt UV that runs right down the middle of here. And what happens with this is water comes in here from the pond. It flows around and around the UV, which kills the algae, kills bacteria, pathogens, parasites and so on. And then it flows through a series of foams in the buried part. This is probably about two foot, two foot six deep in the ground, foams. Water goes through the foams. out this pipe up to the cascade. There is another fitting here which allows you to attach a pipe which can then lead to a drain and when you want to clean the filter all you do is turn that point towards the drain leaving the pump on take the handle pump it up and down and what that does it actually washes the foams out in your pond water removing all the muck to the drain means that you don't have to pull this apart and you don't get your hands mucky. Once you've finished the cleaning process, all you do is just turn the valve back here, put your cap back on. Really simple to clean. This is the pump that I'm using. It's an Aquamax Eco 8000 from Oase. Heavy duty pipe. Means it's not going to crack. Very hard to pierce. And it's going to last a hell of a long time. The pump itself has got a five year guarantee. So it's going to last well. The last thing I want to do is come back to a job because of a faulty pump or something getting blocked or some sort of problem that could have been avoided. This particular pump actually has two inlets, it's got the obvious one through all these holes here in the cage but it's also got one here as well, by taking this off and attaching a hose tail and an extra bit of pipe you can have it either go into a skimmer to suck all the muck off the top of the pond or you can have it go into a smaller version of this cage which is called a satellite strainer which means that you can pull from two different places in the pond, so you can pull from the deep end and the shallow end simultaneously, so really the key To a successful pond is obviously creating it the right size for the fish you're going to stock and also having a good pump as the heart of your pond, a bit like the heart in your chest. Instead of pumping blood around, it's pumping water around and also a good filter. Think of this as the lungs of your pond. This will filter out all the muck that comes into here. Hopefully, you should have crystal clear water. Obviously, the pond at present hasn't got crystal clear water. We've only just filled it up and we've been working around it with mucky soil. But I'll do an update when I come back and sort the bankside out and it should be crystal clear then. That's it for this series of videos. We've switched the cascade off now. The cement's only been in there a couple of days so we had it running before just to test that everything was okay. It is, which is always a bonus. And we're going to leave that to go off for at least a week before we set it away proper. Thanks for watching this series. Any questions, put them in the comments below. Hello, if you've liked it, give it a thumbs up. Favourite date? Whatever. Thanks for watching. Simultaneously. Simultaneously. You still got it wrong, didn't you? Simultaneously. Simultaneously. It's not simultaneously. Simultaneously. When people are watching this!