Building Your Water Feature

There are many types of materials and ways to form a water feature in your yard. You can purchase a liner, preformed pond, or make your own from cement. In this chapter, we will explore those among those many ways.

For a smaller pond an old whiskey half barrel does a great job. The barrel can be lined with PVC liner and tacked down with upholstery tacks or you can purchase a plastic insert.

Barrel gardens are usually only twenty-five to forty gallons with the average cost between $30 and $50. Your barrel will need tabs placed where it get four to six hours of sun.

Stocking includes one to two bunches of oxygenating plants, two smaller marginals, and one dwarf lily. Plants perfect for a barrel pond include (but aren’t limited to): cardinal flower, horsetail, arrowhead, lotus, dwarf iris, dwarf umbrella, water hyacinth, and water hawthorn.

The next size up would be a preformed pond made of a hard black PVC or fiberglass. These pools are in easiest to install and range from fifty to six hundred gallons. They come in various sizes and shapes including rectangle, kidney, and square. Purchasing is a matter of convenience, since they can usually be found at local home and garden stores, including Lowe’s or Home Depot… even Wal-mart! Because of using much heavier PVC than a liner, their life expectancy can range from twenty-five to thirty years.

Another fiberglass product that can be used is an old hot tub. The jets can be plugged up, or can be used for filtration. The nice thing about a hot tub, is that it already has a bottom drain installed.

To install your preformed pond, you will need to measure around the tub with a garden hose the dig six inches beyond that point. Place sand in the bottom of the hole (about two inches deep), then place the tub on top of the sand. If you are using a black preformed, you can bury the entire pond, but with a hot tub, only part of it has to be in the ground. In fact, both of my hot tub ponds are buried to the big step with dirt and rocks around it as an elevated pond.

For a one hundred gallon preformed pond, you would need a fifty-gallon per hour pump with a small mechanical filter and small biological filter. These two filters can be connected to use the same pump.

Stocking of a one hundred gallon pond would consist of one water lily, six bog plants, and three bunches of submerged plants. Forty-eight inches of fish could find a wonderful home in this pond!

The larger four hundred to six hundred gallon preformed or fiberglass pond would require a two hundred to three hundred gallon per hour pump with a medium sized mechanical filter and a medium sized biological filter. Easily a bell or multi-tier fountain could be installed. Stocking would consist of ninety-six inches of fish, three water lilies, eight bog plants and 10 submerged plants.

Probably the most commonly used material for a water feature is a liner. Most liner material is made of PVC, but you can find some made of rubber. Thickness range from twenty-mil to forty-mil. PVC liners will last an average of ten to fifteen years, depending on the thickness.

The most common reason PVC liners fail is sun rot. The continuous rays of the sun will start to deteriorate the liner. To prevent sun rot, keep the pond well filled. If the linter does happen to get a small tear in it, it can be easily repaired.

Commonly used in Britain, and now available in the United States, are butyl-rubber liners. They are thirty-mil and made of rubber that will not degrade in the sunlight. It is twice to three times as long as PVC linters. A rubber liner can last up to forty years. The only major disadvantages are that they are hard to repair and cost twice as much as a PVC liner.

Installation of a flexible liner, either PVC or rubber, is the same. To start out, choose a place that is not in a low area, preferably in a shaded place and not around deciduous trees. Outline the area with a garden hose.
Measure the area. Then purchase the liner. Add depth to the width plus two extra feet when purchasing your liner.

Dig the site next; leaving a shelf for marginals that measures ten inches wide and ten inches down from the pond’s edge. Angle the pond sides approximately twenty degrees. The pond depth should be eighteen to thirty-six inches.

After leveling the area, place two inches of sand in the bottom of the pond, and underlayment in the bottom of the pound if the area is full of rock. Here in the desert, being that it is sand and rock, you definitely need an underlayment for your PVC liner. Next drape the liner over the hole. You will also need to overlap the liner in curved areas.

After the liner is placed and fairly smoothed out, begin to fill the pond slowly. Position rocks around the pond, approximately two to three feet apart to keep the liner in place.

After filling is complete, take the stabilizing rocks out of the pond and place rocks around the edges. Do NOT place rocks in the bottom of your pond. They will allow uneaten food, fish waste, and other plant waste to settle between the rocks. These particles will then decay and promote harmful bacterial in your pond.

For smaller pond, see the previous section on preformed ponds for the stocking amounts. For ponds of one thousand gallons, you will need: six water lilies, twenty-four bog plants, and twelve submerged plants. Two hundred and thirteen inches of fish would life happily in this pond!

For a pond size of fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred gallons, you could stock with two hundred and fifty inches of fish, five water lilies, twenty-one bog plants, and twenty-four submerged plants.

The longest lasting type of pond is a cement pond. Cement ponds can be formal or informal, depending on their shape. They can be free formed, or can be made into squares and rectangles out of wooden forms.

For a free-formed pond, excavate to a depth of two feet for fish. The put stakes into the ground in a grid fashion, making them five inches above the ground. As you pour the concrete, level it out at the mark on the stakes. Remove the stakes after you have leveled the concrete out. Also, if you live in an area that freezes, you will need to add rebar mesh underneath your concrete. In mild climates the concrete can be four inches in depth, but in colder climates, it must be six inches in depth.

You can use the standard mix of concrete, or a mixture of one part Portland cement, two part rock, and four parts sand (be weight). Water is the added until you can cut it with a trowel, but not so thick that it is crumbly. After the cement is poured and hardened, use a mixture of one part Portland cement to one part sand to apply a smooth coating.

A commercial sealant, such as Thoraseal, can be used next to waterproof, or you can pain the cement with black rubber paint. Black paint used for pool striping works great. Make sure that the paint you use is a water-based paint, not oil. Your fish will thank you later! (You will actually have fish).

For a natural looking pond, large river rock may be used while the sealant coat of mortar is still wet. Do not use the smaller rock because particles can get caught between the rock… increasing the toxic bacteria level in your pond.

As soon as the final layer of cement has hardened, fill your pond with water and let it set for two weeks to dispose of the lime in the water.

If you have your cement commercially prepared, and you live in the desert, make sure that they DO NOT use curing retardant. This retardant can be fatal to fish and plants.