New 1500L(ish) goldfish pond build

Today's progress
He landed up doing rough plastering on the inside and top before I realised, so none of that has waterproof additive in which frustrates me. But he will do proper plastering of the whole pond tomorrow, and I will ensure the waterproof additive gets included in the mix.




Once the plaster is added we'll wait a few weeks for it all to cure and dry out fully before painting it with durapond, so it unfortunately won't get filled until September.

 

It's finally done!!!





I still need to fill the gap between the pond and the house wall, but I want to wait until after I've waterproofed it and tested that it doesn't leak.




The little white pipe sticking out is the overflow pipe. We will likely attach a flexible hose to it which we can lead down into the drain (and then I'll hide it with a tall pot plant or something).


I will do final internal measurements when I'm sure the plaster is totally dry and won't get disturbed.
I also still need to close up the gap between the pond and the house wall, but I want to ensure there are no leaks out that side first before closing it up.
In a few weeks, when I'm sure the cement is fully cured, then I will paint the inside with Durapond or something similar to waterproof it, and we'll paint the outside the same colour as the house wall. Then we'll fill it and test for leaks, and then I'll close up the gap between pond and wall with expanding foam, which I'll smooth to look like the sides of the pond and then also paint the same house colour. Then the earth/sand will be filled in around it again so that the bottom three layers of the pond are underground.

We have an electrician coming later this month to sort out a few minor things around the house, so I want to ask him at the time what he thinks is the best idea for the pump - to install an outside plug point (which will be just above the pond on the far edge of the wall - there's already a light above that so I reckon he can pull the wires down from there or something), or if it's better for him to rather extend the power cable of the pump and we can then feed it in through my son's bedroom window and plug it in inside.

The pump I currently use in my 1mx1m pond turns 3800l/h. This pond holds roughly 1500L. Given what I've read about pond pumps I actually think the one I have might be sufficient for this much bigger pond. Would certainly save me a ton of money if I don't need to buy a bigger one! I do want to redo the filtration system though, so the water will pass through more media before being returned to the pond.

 

So a quick summary breakdown of how the pond was built:

Foundation made with concrete is roughly 15cm thick. Ratio used was 1 bag cement : 3 bags phillipi sand : 1 bag 13mm stones.
I think we used 4 batches of that to get it the right thickness.
That was covered with a solid layer of dpc plastic (there's actually dpc plastic in the middle of the foundation as well, but it was cut while still folded so it's multiple layers thick but various pieces put next to each other), and then topped with waterproofed screed/cement - 1 bag ppc cement : 3 bags phillipi sand, with powered waterproof cement additive added (I can't remember the brand).

Walls are 9 courses high, made with old red bricks we dug up from our garden path. They're very solid clay bricks.
Walls are double brick thickness (so roughly 23cm thick), with brickforce between every layer. Mortar used was 1 bag ppc cement to 3 bags philipi sand, to make it nice and strong. We used 3 batches of that for all the bricks.

A small piece of pvc pipe was added above the 8th course of bricks as an overflow pipe.

The inside was then roughly plastered with that same mortar mix, and then the next day the whole pond, inside and out, was properly plastered with a mix of 1 bag ppc cement to 4 bags Malmesbury sand, with a bottle of liquid waterproofing additive (Pudlo Mortamix) added.

Once everything is fully cured the inside will be waterproofed with something along the lines of Duram Durapond, or perhaps abe laykold.

 

Good progress. I bet you cant wait to get this up and running

 

Definitely!

 

Over on the inside or outside? Maybe a stupid question, but how would it block up?

 

oh, ok, that's a good point!
We do have a huge Brazillian pepper tree relatively closeby. The pipe will be above the water level most of the time, so in theory it shouldn't get blocked. But I will keep an eye on how many leaves fall into the pond with the pipe in mind and will then decide whether or not to add a mesh cover of some sort. Based on the number of leaves that fall into the other pond I don't think it will be necessary, but it's definitely worth being aware of so thanks for bringing that to my attention.

 

I just measured the actual internal dimensions of the pond and it measures 238cm long, by 83cm wide, by 83cm high.
The overflow pipe is situated at 76cm high, and I only plan to keep it filled to around 70cm, so the water volume will be roughly 1382L.

My current wooden pond's internal dimensions (using current water level) are 98 x 92 x 52, so water volume of 468L (or around 500L when it's slightly fuller).

So the new pond is between two and three times as much water volume.

I'm a little frustrated we didn't pay more attention to the foundation size though and account for how much bigger that needed to be than the actual walls of the pond, because the pond would have been easily 30cm longer if we'd done the foundation correctly, which would have made the volume a little over 1500L and the pond would have filled the space better.

But I'm still really happy with it and itching to waterproof and fill it.

 

I am!
It looks quite imposing just standing there, this rather large cement structure. I'm dying to fill the sand in around it and paint it and fill it and get it looking nicer. Not to mention wanting to move the fish across and watch them enjoy the extra length!
Hubby is now considering tiling the outside. I'm not overly opposed to it but I really struggle to visualise things like that so I'm not sure yet about it. Painting it the same colour as the house I can imagine because, well, the house wall is right there LoL. But tiling I'm struggling with because I'm not sure what tiles we would choose or how it would look. I think it *could* look nice, I just can't picture it yet. But it does need a bit of softening up as it does look rather big and heavy and imposing as it currently stands.

I'm curious to see how it holds onto water during the next few days of rain.
When I sprayed it down this past week it always held a couple of mm of water in the base, which I then dried out with a towel to give that a chance to dry and cure properly. But now I want to see how much teh rain fills it and how it holds onto that. I haven't painted any waterproofing stuff on yet, but there is waterproof cement additive in the plaster mix so it should hold at least some. So just curious to see (though not looking forward to manually removing all that water afterwards )

 

In Stellenbosch (work) it's cloudy by not really even drizzling. At home (Bellville) it was drizzling this morning, but nothing too major.

 

That is a nice idea!

 

 if only it was that easy!