Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions Rubber Liner

I plan to line the bottom area of a pond that leaks to the groundwater. I plan to remove 1.5 feet of soil in this 35x40 foot area and put down liner and re cover with the dirt and compact. If the liner needs to be seamed is a large overlap like five feet good enough? Still use two sided tape?
Thanks

I used vinyl cement on the billboard tarps I used. It was cheap and gives you a little more peace of mind since you don't want to have to do it again. Good luck! My post is here:
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=473658#Post473658

With steep sides have you had issues with soil on tarps trying to slide down?

No.None at all. It took about one season for the loose soil to settle and it is locked in good at this point. I would have lessened the slope a little if I did it again so I could have used the bobcat to cover the slopes. I couldn't really use the bobcat for the steep sides. What I did was dump loads at the top and then raked it down. Or the kids did. But honestly you will be surprised how tight the soil you cover the tarp will become. Gravity I guess. So far so good for mine.

Just read your first post again and you state you are only doing a portion of the bottom. If you read my post you will see I tried that a couple years before and it just leaked where the liner stopped. I ended up having to remove the first try and redo the whole thing. Just a thought but I would go all the way up the first time. But every pond is different.

How do you get or where do you get the billboard tarps? Cost comparison to liners? size of these tarps? Are they similar to pond liners, in the material used to make them? I have an area near the pond that mostly sand, all the way to 15' deep. If I could buy a cheep tarp of decent size, I would build a small pond to raise forage fish in. I see billboards around with phone numbers on them for rental of the space, and thought of calling them for information on the tarps mentioned several times here on the forum. Have not seen anyone mention how or where to get them and how well they work.

I bought mine off craigslist. I think 30 bucks a piece. Cost is in my post. They are 15'x48'. Not anywhere close to a true pond liner as far as material. The Firestone EPDM liners are really thick and tough but look at the cost difference. It cost me like $270 to do mine. A true liner would have been in the thousands. If you are looking at the cheaper pvc/vinyl liners online, these are basically the same quality and will hold up just fine from what I can tell so far.

I am a small contractor and we do a lot of pond work and I would agree with Jason7858, Line the entire thing the first time because more than likely you will have to redo it, what happens is if the soil is not very dense the water will leak under the liner and then you have another mess and a lot of hard work wasted. If you are confident the soil is OK on the slopes I would at least make sure you dig a key trench around the liner and spread and compact bentonite after you back fill the key way. As far as the slopes we do have tough time once in a while making sure the soil doesn't slide down but like he said every pond is different. We have used bunker covers in the past, witch is silage bags just not in bag form, and have had very good luck with it. You can get it in lengths of up to 1500'l x 150"w and anything in between, plus it is very easy to work with compared to other liners, I need to note the quality is nothing like the actual pond liners but is a fraction of the cost and if care is taken the results will show. An example is we did a 4.5 acre pond and the liner cost was 17k compared to over 100k if we used the actual pond liner. We also use a spray adhesive to seal the joint and overlap by about 10'-15'. If you have any questions please let me know. Best of luck with everything

I looked into billboard tarps a couple years back. I found this site that sells new and used tarps.

https://billboardtarps.com/