Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Pond Liners - detrimental to insect life ?

So after years of unsuccessfully trying to stop a leaking pond, I am considering a pond liner (donations appreciated ) - so my question is what are the downsides of a lined pond ? - like for instance - how do you compensate for a lack of not having a bottom like in a normal lake that produces insect life for small fish to feed on ?

You DO have a bottom. You are supposed to cover the liner with 12" or so of soil.

How well does that work if you have fairly steep sides - trying to go in and out with a tractor and dirt and not disturbing or tearing the liner ?

And trying to keep the dirt on steep sides ?

Define "steep". How much fall vertically for horizontal run?

One foot vertical for every two feet horizontal (in most places)

Yeah, that's too steep. You might want to think about cutting a part of the bank back to 3:1 then putting the liner in there. That will allow the equipment into the pond basin to pack dirt there. BTL Liners have some installation videos on their website.

Thanks - I will take a look at that . Spoke with them the other day and they asked for some pictures. I asked about a "partial liner" since one end of this 2/3 acre pond is where we hit shale and may have a faulty core trench - and despite two attempts at packing more black mud into the bottom, haven't achieved much. Pond does not leak out the toe of the embankment on one end until water level passes 7' and on its way to 11.5 '. The more the water rises the more gets pushed out the toe of the embankment. Currently filling with river water at approximately 6000 gallons a day and that is only maintaing the current 7' level.

The "partial liner" did not get much traction with them and so we are probably looking at 30K after all is said and done for a complete pond liner - and that does not include cost of removing large logs sunk into the pond and a pile of huge boulders !!

Maybe it would be cheaper just to concrete the whole 1/3 end of the pond !

Only if the concrete contractor will guarantee that the water will not go around the concrete, which I doubt that they will do. Do it all or none.

Think of a bathtub. It holds water until the plug is pulled. So, go back to the concrete scenario. How can you be 100% sure that you covered the area where the plug is?