I used about 5 tons of rip-rap around the edges of my pond and have another ton or so to place now that the water is down. I had to stack 2 4x4's along the bottom of one edge and drive stakes on the outside edge to hold what I put in on the steep slope. Like Ken says you have to place most by hand, but it sure helps to have a front end loader get it to the location. I have several other large boulders around that are used as seating and also some large limestone slabs that I will use for the waterfall feature. There are some pics if you want to see what we did. My Pond