Mercury,
Welcome to the show! As a newbie to this pond thing, I also considered equipment purchases and DIY. Ultimately, I paid da man and don't regret the decision. I have now had the chance to watch a backhoe and dozer perform the "heavy equipment ballet" as they groomed my project. I cannot for the life of me imagine not only the expense of purchase (and maintainence!) of this type of equipment, but maybe more...the time required to execute the work. ML and Russ touched briefly on this same subject in the thread:
New pond, old question... Make no mistake, tho...I truly respect the entrepeneur that does go ahead and DIY with a his own equipment.
