Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Has anyone used preformed concrete steps?

We have a new .33 acre pond with depths 10-13.5 ft. The dogs and geese make a constant mess tracking the red clay out of the pond. The local rock yard sells 4' wide concrete slab steps. I was thinking of making a staircase out of them for swimming access. Any thoughts or alternatives? Thanks.

I use a floating dock with a flip-up ladder. I would worry about algae making the concrete steps slippery and causing someone to fall on the hard material, but maybe they have enough texture to prevent that?

I think he's looking for access for the dogs. Concrete has lime in it, which will cause rapid algae build up, and will become very slippery. I wouldn't use concrete unless I had a way to keep it clean of algae. If you can put creek rock around the edges of the pond it would work better.

I worry about that as well. My wife was suggesting something like concrete curbs holding back gravel. I think that will become a mess in very little time. Is there any proper way to make a swim beach in clay? Every time we step in it, we sink down 4 inches!

Cover the clay with old carpeting, and then put pea gravel or coarse sand over that. It won't sink into the clay that way, and manmade fiber carpeting won't rot since it will be protected from the sun by the sand or gravel.That's how I made pea gravel nesting sites for BG in my first pond.

dsimonl, welcome to the forum. Tell us a bit about your pond. And, where in Idaho are you? I was on the Snake across from Marsing for many years back in the 80s and 90s.

You've gotten good ideas from our other posters. I have simply laid concrete pavers on our mud bottom where we and the dogs like to enter and exit the pond. The dogs, in particular, are in and out of the pond so much no algae nor mud accumulates.

Roger

Thanks for all the replies. We're east of Moscow. The pond was built this year and is ~2/3 filled. Next year we hope to stock with CC (I put a bunch of habitat in for them already). I like the carpeting idea. We have a fairly gentle slope down to the 10' depth, a flat area, then a large pool at 13.5 feet. I obviously can't cover the entire bottom with carpet. What stops the gravel from sliding down the slope to the bottom?

I put a partial ring of rocks and bricks (whatever I had at the time) along the bottom edges of the gravel on the carpet to keep the gravel from eventually migrating deeper.