Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Bought a house with a pond, now what?

I would do like liquidsquid said and check carefully for a liner. If no liner, I'd excavate to get all the existing "muck" out of the pond basin, and go 12" deeper. Get a 1 piece liner, install per mfg. recommendations and cover it with 12" of dirt that came from the last layer you removed. NOT the muck that you removed.

Pieces of liner that aren't glued together (sealed) won't work and you will be losing water. With that so close to the house, it is probably contributing to the foundation problem you had.

As for no fish. I'd rethink that and toss in some mosquito fish or fathead minnows to dine on any mosquito larvae. Mosquito fish will do a better job of that and they may be available free from the county vector control agency.

The dirt is needed to protect the liner from UV rays, and the dirt will be the growing medium for your plants. Frogs need it too - they burrow down and hibernate during the winter, no matter how short it is.

Thinking to the future, "making it watertight" will probably save you money in the long run looking at current utility prices vs. "reducing the leakage".