The Leather Oaks Garden -- Yet Another Pond Rebuild

We're going to get it RIGHT this time!

This Page Created on March 20th, 2009

The biological filter was meant to be almost a side issue! The primary reason for seeking help was to find a solution to the recurring problems with liner inversions the Leather Oaks pond had been experiencing the last couple of years.

I found this neat manufactured rock, "Frozen Frog" at a neighborhood nursery, and it seemed the right idea. What I was looking for was more flow through my biological filter, and also to raising the height of the "falls". I hoped too that using the deeper parts trays as each intermediate basin would also improve the sounds.

There is a link on this photo to a closeup of the "Frozen Frog": We really like our frogs!

Roy and his son had their work cut out for them, trying to drain a pond that had not been cleaned since it was built over ten years previously! This photo was taken after they had already cut out all of the vegetation, and after repeated washinngs of the gravel bottom.

My friends had prior commitments, so had to stop even as we realized there were still problems that didn't have a simple solution: The biggest was that when they refilled the pond, the liner floated to the surface is large portions!

It was so funny, remember the old line, "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning"?

It was a similar situation. I could see the liner just below the surface, and this was despite our stuffing a lot of brick pavers along the edges of the Pond. "I don't like the feel of this!"

Adrian, the name my new Bronze Man with Shell had told me he preferred, points at the problem. That black plastic just in front of his feet should be over a foot below the surface!

"Give it another day," I was told. Okay, how about this day? The area was so disturbed I had not even tried to restore and simplify the pump plumbing. You can tell that only Pipe is contributing to the water aeration.

It didn't get any better. I talked it over with my neighbor Mike, trying to decide the best course. He had brought me some gravel to add to the botttom, as I had lost a lot through the removal of the old vegetation. First though, how to deal with the "floating" liner? Well, a plastic liner can only "float" if there is a lot of water under it. So, here the water is once again all pumped out.

Did I say the water is all pumped out? It's not that easy! Those three red pavers are holding a pump down into the liner to try to coax more water from the gravel and mush on the bottom of the pond!

"Mush, you ask"? Despite all of the earlier attempts, we were still getting more silt and trash out of the pond!

You see all of those pavers stacked at the South end of the pond? Those we had been using in our vain attempt to hold the liner in place. That tan tarpaulin is going to be our gravel chute.

There's a link on this photo to the second page of the 2008 Pond Re-walling. I know you're biting nails in impatience to see how this is resolved.