I'm so frustrated and we have been arguing about this all day I want to tell you my plan for the pond and see what you think. My bf says it isn't physically possible.

First of all in the pond I will be (or aspire to be) keeping a few common goldfish and some blue orfe. I want the pond to be 4 and a half foot deep. Because this seems large ammount of water some people had advised me to reinforce it with bricks.

The width of the pond will be 5 foot. The legnth of the pond will be between 5 and 7 foot. these 2 sides form a rightangle corner, which is paralel to the corner of the garden, so the pond will be a sort of triangle shape, with the hypotenuse (spelling?) nearer the middle of the garden.

However I do not want a surface pond, if bricks are involved, I would like to have between 1 and 2 foot of bricks sticking out of the ground, so that the water level is above ground level by maybe 1 foot ish.

although i have seen countless pictures of brick ponds on the internet, i'm being told that I have no knowledge of physics and that it is impossible without some MASSIVE sort of metal structure to hold it all together.

Please tell a) if think this would be a suitable size to keep the fish i mentioned and b) your thoughts on the design.

Hi,

It can be done but for the build that is in the ground, you will be better of using either 9"blocks filled with concrete or 4" laying flat on top of each other. You can then use brick on the top above ground. I presume you are going to line with Butyl as opposed to water-proofed render or fibreglass. To be honest, for a few common goldfish and orfe 4.5 feet deep is a little excessive, you could actually get away with 3 feet max using the other dimesions you have. To be honest without some sort of reinforcing using brick would be a little iffy, and you would have to build it 2 bricks width, and it would be a lot more expensive than concrete blocks.

Hi llVeXXll, I have to agree with you. As you said you have seen pictures where it is built with bricks.




No massive steel structure required. Sorry about that Mr llVeXXll)

BUT, you do have to build a double wall (As shown in the picture) As its a double wall, you will use twice as many bricks, which puts the cost up, so as
Mr Grumpy said, you would be better off using concrete blocks, (At least below ground) But that said you could use concrete blocks then render them. Then paint it.

As for size, you only build a pond once.............

But if you are going to that effort, I would suggest a bottom drain. (you can see one HERE ) But your set up need not be as elaborate.

Thanks for your replies. Mygrumpy: I have decided to have it 4 foot deep instead then.. but neither me or my boyfriend have that much experience with masonry work. Is it true that the safer option would be to just concrete line the whole thing? This is what people seem to do for most very large ponds. He is very worried about the structural integrity if the concrete block perimeter is just going to be in a trench.

I am aware I would have to use a double layer of normal bricks above ground (or the inner layer concrete blocks and then a decorative outer layer of normal bricks) Any which way I want to do this, seeing as it is a fairly big pond and I want it with bricks showing, then its gona be expensive whatever we do. (I think, looking at B and Q prices anyway)

I'm sorry if I seem stupid but I really am a novice at any kind of building work so you will have to explain to me exactly what you mean.

2010: Yes I would like a bottom drain. the drainage and pumps and filtration seems to be the easy bit, it is just the structure that is proving difficult to plan. Although talking about pumps, I have decided i will need an external pump that turns out at least 1000 gph, and I need a biological pressurised filter, right???

Labour wise it shouldn't be too much of an expense for a decent brickie. Looking at the picture above, it shouldnt take more than a couple of days. Plenty of people looking for work ;). If you were to supply materials you'd be better of going to a proper builders merchant, i.e. buildbase, jewson, burdens, etc. You should get a better price.

llVeXXll, your pond is less than 1000 gallons, you can turn it all over once every four hours, and you don't want a pressurised filter (They don't work with bottom drains)

Worry about the pump and filter later. (But not too late)

Hi 11VeXX11,
Just a word of caution about your proposed pond shape that you should think about before commiting yourself.

How do you expect the corners of your raised triangular brickwork to look? Assuming that you want to achieve a nice sharp corner then that can only be achieved by cutting the brick and having a straight verticle joint right on the corner. This is a very weak joint which would be liable to cracking if not designed and built correctly.

In a standard brick wall most of the strength in the masonry is a result of the brick 'bond' used, i.e. there are no straight vertical joints. If you want a sharp corner then you would have no choice but to use a straight joint in your outer skin of brickwork and only achieve a limited bond (because of the angled corner) on your inner skin.

To overcome this problem you will need to insist that the corner joints are reinforced. On a small project like yours this isn't difficult or very expensive, but without it the joint will crack a few Months after it has been built. What you need is a product called 'bricktor', this is a stainless steel mesh which is laid across the open joint and bedded in the mortar at eack course of bricks and can be bought from any builders merchants.

Regards

Iain

I am with 2010 here if you are going to build it as a solid form, then go big as you can. It may sound silly but it can work out cheaper when you buy more. Try to find a good recommended local builder and ask him to order the blocks/bricks as normally than can get a huge discount and build it for you all in the same price. It pays to search around and in these days of hardship many builders need to take on anything they can to tie them over. You can save money by digging out the foundations and drainage channels yourself before the builders start if they give you directions as to what you need to do. Find your builder and discuss it with them.

My last pond was 25L x 12W x 7D and was a lovely site full of koi.

Thanks everyone, I just seem to keep getting more and more confused.

It seems the plan now is that we are going to concrete bottom of the pond hole and build up with cinder block around the side (with a portion above ground which will be back built and reinforced with normal bricks for asthetics) then skim the inside and make it suitable for a liner to go in there. The concrete adds more to the cost though.

2010 i used several online calculators, they calculated that the pond will actually be slightly over 1000 gallons (imperial) 1039 to be precise.

Iain wow thankyou I did not think about this. Well how do they build the corner of houses then? reinforcement? I'm not hell bent on it being a sharp corner. But I was always under the impression that rounded corners were difficult to do with bricks/ cinder blocks.

We have contacted different cheaper suppliers of bricks and stuff and it seems really expensive.. I worked out that I will need roughly

45 cinder blocks and 600 normal bricks, then theres the concrete and the mortar! Its going in excess of 500 pounds!!!?!?!? Am I missing something?

We did contact a landscaper and he just said it was physically impossible -.- which I know is BS because ive jsut watched loads of youtube videos of ponds similar to how I want them, granted most of them are either ALL below ground or ALL above ground but if it can be structurally sound ALL above ground then I cannot see why it would not work half in half out with the same building method.

My bf is saying that it is to do with a) the shape that I want the pond (he is refering to the hypotenuse curvey bit, not the corner, which just shows he probably doesn't know as much as he thinks after I have now read Ians post) and b) the fact that I want to pond to be 4 foot deep. HE IS SAYING that for a 4 foot deep pond to be structurally sound it needs to have much larger legnth and width dimentions and that the "surface pressure" is too great seeing as my legnth and width are only going to be 5 foot and 6 foot.

I'm like, what the hell? If you increase the volume of water, you increase the pressure, right? It doesnt matter whether I wanted a 4 foot deep pond that was 1X1 foot would it!? That would just be a WELL. lol. Wells don't bust their seems.

Construction

Not wishing to upset you,but wells (no punn intended) never "bust their seams" because the earth surrounding them is pushing inwards and the water is pushing outwards.
But in order to make sure walls don't burst pond builders often "over engineer" the construction, BUT. better safe than sorry.


Volume

I took rough measurements to be 6 x 5 x 4 feet which is 72 x 60 x 48 inches, I then used the volume calculator on the right of this page, it says 747.63 gallons. But even if it is just over 1000 gallons, its not a koi pond, so you still only need to turn the volume once every 4 hours.


Cost

£500, I know its not my money, but look at it the other way, if its built from brick it will last for ever and will be going nowhere, its an investment. (That's why you should only do it the once) I know you are not building a koi pond, but as an example koi ponds often cost over £2,000


Taken from This place
Building a 'proper' koi pond IS expensive, and will cost between £1 and £3 per gallon to build correctly. Yes, you can cut corners. Yes, you can do it much more cheaply. But remember whatever you build will probably be there for many years.

(My signature says it all)