Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Building a dam The Baird Method

B'ski! Fascinating. That exactly the stuff I wanted/didn't want to hear. Do you have any photos of her setup? It sounds like it would be very cool to see.

Bruce,

The thought of a windmill mentioned above is based on the normal three dry months we have here. To keep the 10 x 25 x 6 foot hole full of water, I'm thinking I need far less than 10 gph. I'm hoping that a significant amount of water over that limit should flow back into the main pond. I'm more concerned about oxygen levels and ammonia if my fish grow too much during the warm weather.

Hopefully, all of this should be realizable with a small pump, and should have minimal effect on my main pond level if I pull the water from there.

As you mentioned above, pulling water from the center level of my main pond may provide the best water.

I've also got an unused two-story 3000 square-foot building on my property. It is well insulated, with a concrete floor, a 200 amp electric service, heat, telephone/wideband internet, and air conditioning. It is about 600 feet from my house and about 1000 feet from my pond. The previous owner used it as a taxidermy studio. The well that also feeds my house, feeds this building. The well was rated at 24 gpm when it was drilled. I keep thinking I need to put this building to use -- I just don't know for what purpose.

Ken

zhkent, I sent you a PM.

Cody's image.

Question for Bill.

If I chose the appropriate sized stone or smooth rock couldn't the trench and diversion ditch be one and the same?

Also, just FYI, I have a hill on each side, but I get the point. Well done.

I need zhkent's drawing!

I'll have D-ski reach out to her sis' and get details and pics.
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The last last vacation property we owned (before we cashed it in for the pond project) had a very nice little goldfish pond on it. It was 30" deep and about 6' x 10' plus/minus. Anyway, we eventually filled it in because it was a maintenance headache, and the coons felt too welcome.

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When we dis-assembled it, it was a normal black rubberized sumthin-or-other pond liner. The hole was dug and shaped with a shelf going around one edge. The laid in old shag carpeting on the bottom surfaces and the ledge surfaces, then laid the liner right over it. Where it would turn around a perimeter, they simply folded it incrementally and laid about 12" - 18" over the top edge. This hem around the outside of the pond was held down with 2" - 3" thick flagstone, all the way around. Fill 'er up.
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There was alot of trees over the thing, and part of the maintenance nightmare was cleaning out leaves in the fall and seeds/pods in the spring. I built this thing as a last ditch effort to save the pond.

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It's all 1" PVC and glued fittings. The netting is that fine black mesh stuff with 1" square openings. I secured it to the PVC frame with tiny nylon cable ties. I pounded in a #3 rebar directly beneath each leg, leaving about 18" of the rebar above grade. The legs slipped right over the rebar. It worked good, but for one unexpected drawback. Ocassionally a Goldfinch would somehow get inside. Once they are in, they can't get back out. Just one more reason to eventually scrap the entire fish pond thing.

Guys,

I've got some thoughts and will respond. Problem is right not that darn head cold still has the best of me and it's hard to think. I'm sitting here with coffee in hand hoping it will sooth my throat.

Wow I'm worn out just from that paragraph!

You mean hold the liner down with rock only, no soil, and have the same ditch serve as a french drain to divert runoff around the pond?

Catmandoo:

I believe your concept of pumping main pond water up to mini-ponds would in many ways parallels drawing a domestic water supply from a ponds (on the supply side, not wrt treatment). As you and Bruce indicated, the best water is supposed to be 2 to 3 feet down from the surface - that's the level with the lowest combination of plants, plankton, and bottom sediment, plus I agree it should have decent oxygen levels and lower organic wastes than bottom water.

You may want to consider an inlet filter such as these listed by Stoney Creek Equipment. I use one of the 4" centrifugal pump intake filters for a gravity fed water line (and need to get another one for my new pond's companion cattle trough) with the internal check valve disabled, since in my application there is no pump attached.

Bruce if you want this for mostly observation consider a white or light liner or background. Much easier to see fish with a light background.

My mom and dad have a koi pond in their backyard. It used to have some huge koi and beautiful koi in it. Until the herons found their place. The ate most of the koi in a day or two.

Their pond was constructed using the method diagrammed above. The liner was brought up the sides of the pond to a shelf that was outside the pond. Landscape boulders were placed on the liner to hold it in place.

They tried a wire around the perimeter of the pond and it didn't seem to distract the herons much. Finally they resorted to one of those motion detector sprinkler things. That has worked ever since (although it does occasionally blast their dog who apparently is not as intelligent as a heron).

Oh and Bruce you might want to consider placing a bank or savings and loan on your international offshore island. (Republic of Condello Savings and Loan). That way you can launder mafia money and retire from your other illicit profession of part time dentistry.

And that's all I have to say about that.

bill's diagram is what i was thinking (thanks bill). you could backfill the trench w/ coarse gravel and it could be dual purpose drain and liner holder. w/ well placed edging/decorative rocks, erosion/sedimentation shouldnt be a big problem on a pond that small.

Here's a variation by zhkent.

Bruce, Most seem to agree that the diversion ditch and liner ditch could be combined and serve the same purpose.

Bruce,

I am flattered that you and others have asked for my imput. If the truth be know much of what I have done has been trial and error and dumb luck, but I have learned some things along the way.

O.K. first some things I have learned about the herons...

Will they try to stand and feed off a floating island? Darn tootin they will! I've seen them spear fish off of one of my piers as soon as I went back into the house just after feeding time, and I've seen them stand on top of my floating cages looking for an easy meal before I was smart enough to put covers on the cages. They are very adaptable birds and evolved to get fish anyway they can. They can actually curl their feet around a 1 1/2 inch PVC cage frame, which of course is not hard to believe as they do perch in trees at night and during nesting time. And they have sharp claws for gripping.

[b]The steep banks work really well to discourage herons, but I did have one bird that was willing to stand precariously on a very steep bank (almost vertical) waiting to lunge at a fish. He was able to grasp some weeds to hold himself in place. He was willing to take a chance at a tumble to get at one of my nice juicy brook trout. So steep banks are not 100 precent failsafe. That said, steep banks in combination with simple stake lines around the pond and either an electric fence or just some heavy braided fishing line should do the trick. I prefer the braided line that is brightly colored so they get the message. I once freed a pigeon from monofilament line as it got it's wing tangled in it. I wasn't crazy about that. I think if it had been able to see the line better it would have not got into that mess.

As far as the islands I would think the only way to make them non heron friendly would be the staked lines as Bill mentioned. And lets just say they only use the islands as resting places. That would still mean their fecal matter could end up in the pond and don't forget all they have to do is tilt their heads down to allow parsites to enter the water.

And even though herons are a wading bird, and are said not to land in water they will do so if they realize the bottom is shallow enough for them to stand on. A colleague tells me she sees them landing in a nearby shallow river all the time. So you want to make your underwater banks steep and the water deep enough so they can't land in it.

Not sure if I'm crazy about the islands in such a small pond for aother reason. Sounds like they would be geese (what Bill Cody calls flying toilets) or duck magnets which would be O.K. in a bigger pond, but most likely these birds could bring in too many nutrients and bring in aquatic weeds, or even parasites. One pair of geese could make a mess on a pond that size.

If you want the pond as an observation pond is it possible the fish would naturally go under the islands where you can't see them?

Do you have an ospreys or bald eagles in the area? They could cause you problems too in a small pond especially with clear water. Again some staked lines across the top of the pond would discourage them if necessary.


Your water exchange rate would be more than my ponds. My trout pond(s)(the one I have now and the one I originally had) had and have an exchange rate of about 2/3's a day vs. your projected exchange rate of about 2.5 times per day. My water temp doesn't go above the mid 60's on the surface in the hottest part of the summer in the trout pond, and that is with no shade. Seems to me your pond might stay even cooler. Or due to it being shallower warm up a little? Sounds more like a trout pool to me but I could be wrong. If so, you could have up to about 120 pounds of trout in your pond based on a carrying capacity of 12 pounds per gpm of flow which is what I use. And of course they are fed pellets too. That's still a fun group of fish to have whether it's 120 one pounders, 60 two pounders. 30 four pounders, or 12 ten pounders. If you went the trout route I would start out with higher numbers of course, and gradally thin them down. Of course you will have some natural mortality. If you went the trout route I would also do some mixing of the water column at night and on cool days with a diffuser to aide in nutrient breakdown. Make the banks inside and under the water steep enough to keep cooling down, discourage the herons of course, and discourage racoons from nailng any fish. Trout are actually a no brainer as long as you get healthy fish, and the water stays cool and oxygenated and they get enough to eat but you don't overfeed them.

If you want to go with bluegills and perch I would either enlarge the pond and/or reduce the flow if full flow keeps the water too cool for them. You could adjust the flow into the pond depending on the time of year or divert some of it away from the pond at certain times of the year. I will be doing this this year with my second pond in the series. Early in the year when i want the water to warm up a little i will divert the trout pond inflow away from the pond. Later in the summer when the full trout pond flow keeps the water in the secound pond in the series the perfect mid 70's range I run it in full bore. Which brings me to another possible suggestion rather than screw around with trying to constantly adjust flows:

Have two ponds. One for coldwater fish and the second for coolwater fish like the perch, but the bluegill would do fine in low 70 degree water. It's actually possible the bluegill would live longer in the cooler water vs. the much warmer water where growth is faster. Cooler water holds more oxygen and serves as a safety net too.

To show you how little flow you need and how small earth ponds can be to grow out trout I'm going to see if I can find an article in a magazine with pics of a series of trout ponds that sure simply pits. I don't believe they have liners either.

Did I miss anything?

Nonsense, Cecil - First we had "Cecil Envy" (now up to 39 pages of PBR excitement) and now "The Baird Method". Clearly you are essential to the Condello creative process.

Please provide Bruce with your middle name so he can start formulating his next great idea.

Middle name is 'Dale'.

Dang it Cecil, I was gonna propose a "Guess Cecil's middle name contest." The winner would have received a 1 gallon bucket of Dippity Doo (that I was hoping I could talk Theo into contributing from his vat of the substance).

My guess was gonna be Finneus. Cecil Finneus Baird. It has a very stately ring to it.

I have been gone a while and just got caught up on all this. All i can say is
BRILLIANT!

Baloney on the dumb luck thing. You're far too modest. We know how much you read and study. I'll give you the trial and error thing, but I think there almost no luck at all involved.





OK, point taken.





Alrighty. That's exactly what I'll do.






Should not be a problem at my place. Geese are scarce, and ducks are even scarcer.





That's fine with me if I can't see them all the time. I figure if I see them all the time, then the herons will be even more interested.





Fortunately I don't




That's fascinating...and excellent information. I think you've just saved me some money, because I can either reduce the flow rate or create a second pond.



I'm already starting to scheme on how to do this. Thanks to you.





No. As usual you were thorough and full of good ideas. I'm going to run with several of these.

Slightly more colorful versions of zhkent's proposal.





Which brings me to an important question. In these drawings, the inner "lip", if you will,of the outer rock filled ditch is kind of pointy and unsupported. It is my feeling that this will sag and eventually collapse over a couple of years. Am I right?

I had considered features on the drawings, like the inner lip curves (and the steepness of the pond sides), to be exaggerated for clarity, and would definitely widen the lip out in actuality.

Man those are awful drawings.
The picture in my brain looks much better.

The overall size of liner available might be took into consideration for the final design.
The size and type of rock or gravel will make quite a bit of difference in the overall appearance in the end. What colors, sizes and shape of rock are available will influence that decision.
I've seen some pretty rock that is shaped like large sand granules and colored like that. I think it was actually large sand cleaned out of finer sand. Rounded edges.
You may not want to cover quite as much area with rock as I show. However if the liner is large enough to cover the areas around the pond, and you cover that with rock, it shouldn't require much maintenance. Also the area around the pond in your location will have some runoff and the liner and rock should keep it from washing or getting muddy.
I hope you can find a nice color and texture of rock you like.
Size wise I would suggest going with as large of gravel as you can comfortably walk on. Or get some larger, for placing, and some smaller to make paths with.
1 ten wheeler dumptruck load would probably do it, 2 would do it for sure and leave extra.
If the liner is long enough to cover 2 ponds, it wouldn't ad much to the project to make 2 ponds. (If one roll of liner will cover both, no leakage from one pond to the next.)
In Bruces' last post the top cruddy drawing is inlet-pond-pond-outlet.
Just change that to inlet-pond-pond-(between pond spillway)-pond-pond-outlet. The between pond spillway would have the same cross section as the outlet, length and amount of fall between ponds would be variable, to fit ponds in as required.

The diagram clearly states that the rock must be purple!

Bruce,

Now I have a question. In one of your small ponds you had problems with air bubbles under the liner -- or was it water under the liner that made you liner do funny things? I talked this over with a local liner supplier and he thought you may not have allowed the liner to freely get pulled in as the water filled it. He said one should not trench the outside edge of the liner until the pond is entiredly full.

Was this case or were there other reasons? I know I get water under my well pit liner every spring that seeps in underground which can't be helped. I have a sand vein underneath it.