Hi,

I should have realised sooner - the lawn is almost constantly sodden - but whilst moving some edging slabs I noticed that the ground around them was sodden too, so I lifted the overlapped edge of the liner and saw that there was water on the wrong side of it! i.e. between the ground and the liner and leaking in to the ground. The pond is about 2.5 x 2m and is about 1 metre from my garage and about 3 metres from my house. The soil is all heavy clay.

I thought about my options and here's what I came up with - any comments greatly appreciated:

1. Drain the pond, try to find the leak(s) and repair them. BUT what about my fish and plants wilst the pond is drained? What are the odds of dinding the all the leaks (if there's more than one)? How effective would a repair be?

2. Drain the pond and try to replace the liner. BUT, the liner is concreted in underneath a deck - that would mean taking down the enitre deck (and the concrete it's built on) to try to replace the liner. It would be easier to simply have the pond filled in - I REALLY don't want to get rid of my pond and fish!!

3. Do nothing and keep filling the pond up and hope that the sodden ground doesn't cause any structural problems.

Can anyone help with comments/experience an any of the above options?

Thanks in advance,
Mark.

oh dear.

I've no experience to offer but have an idea. Get one of those big round tubs from the garden center (the ones like toy ponds 1.5m diameter) and pump water from the pond into it then transfer all the fish and hopefully with a little plumbing the filter can be hooked into it too.

From there your should be able to empty the pond and if you cant locate the leak(s) get a new lining sealed to the exposed surface area.

I've read about people gluing strips of liner together to form larger ponds so I expect a decent repair will last a long long time.

You have to options;

1) allow the pond to keep draining until it stops, along the water line is the leak, finding it can be alot harder. Also the problem by doing this, if the leak is at the bottom you would have to move the fish to a holding tank for the short term.

2) do as EagleC says, however like i say finding the hole is easier said than done (remember all it takes is a hole of 1mm to cause alot of water loss), so if you cant it might be matter of getting a new liner but place it on top of you current liner, therefore you will have a double seal.

I would transfer the fish to a holding tank with an oxygenating pump then remove as much of the old liner as possible and replace with a new root barrier and liner.

The reasoning being that it is difficult to find the leak(s). If the leak is due to age degradation, you will most likely get more leaks and have to repeat the process over and over again.

Hopefully, your LFS should be able to provide a holding tank on loan or rent.

Thanks guys,

I feel a little less depressed this afternoon than I did last night ...

I have a few other questions now though and can someone check my understanding too?

1. OK, so I get hold of a large 1.5m tub and pump some pondwater into that.

2. Transfer my fish into the holding tank - I've just bought a hozelock 4-in-1 so I can stick that in the tub ... that'll be ok, won't it?

3. Pump the rest of the water out of the pond ... I've got a drain in my garden, can I pump the water directly into that? If not, what are my options?

4. Do something with the pond plants to keep them alive!!! any ideas anyone?? another tub maybe??

5. Old liner ... there are parts of it that I just wont be able to remove, it's concreted in underneath a deck in one part and underneath the edge of a stone cemicricle in another ... so can't remove all of it ... but

Is it best to cut away most of the old liner leaving just a kind of 'apron' that I can glue the new liner to (if I do this will I need to let the ground underneath dry out before continuing?)

OR

should I leave the old liner in place and simply place the new liner over the top, secure the new liner (in the places where I can) with concrete/edging slabs (as it is now in most places - obviously I'll replace the concrete and paving) and glue the bits that I can't secure otherwise to the old liner???

Does that make sense??? What glue should I use?

What is a root barrier and do I need one?


Some many quistions !

The existing liner doesn't look much like any other liner I've seen and it's only three years old ...

The more I find out about the pond the more I realise that they guy who put it in was only one page ahead of me in the manual ... and a real cowboy!!

Anyhoo, your help/direction will be greatly appreciated.

I have the feeling I'll be posting about this for a while .. . I hope you can bear with me...

Thanks,
Mark.

Quote:
I'd glue the new liner to the old line over the entire contact area.
A root barrier is the thing you use for path and patio foundations, not sure what else its called but it stops or discourages plant roots from tearing through from underneath. The cowboys that did my drive didn't use one and now I have a row of daffodils under the car :-/

PS. I dont own a pond so if confused take Fred's advice over mine

The 4-in-1 is a little pointless as its not going to be mature, but it depends how long the fish are going to be in the holding tank? If no longer than a day then it should be alrite as it'll airate the pond with the fountain.

The plants will be find as long as they are kept moist/wet.

You are best to leave the current liner in place and putting the new one on top, glueing them to togethor would be a good idea, however would be costly and only really done by using a double sided glue tape.

In terms of the new liner, go for a rubber/butyl liner, these cost a bit more than pvc but worth it.

Fred,

If all goes absolutely swimmingly well then I reckon I could get the whole job done in a day ... BUT ... in the real world I reckon I'll have to 'budget' for at least two days and maybe even three.

Could you tell me what I would need to do to keep the fishies fit and well for more than a day in the 'big bucket'?

Thanks in advance,
Mark.

1) Stop feeding for 3 days before moving them across.
2) If you already have a filter on the pond, use the waterfall outlet on the 4-in-1 to feed the filter as this will keep water quality safe in the holding tank and keep the bacteria alive.
3) Cover the holding tank, a net, weighted wood, what ever to stop the fish jumping.
4) An air pump would be helpful but with the fountain and the filter outlet not a 100% needed.

Thats all i can think of at the moment

Ok, so I've started pricing up butyl liner. But it looks really flimsy to me ...

I suppose from time to time, everyone with a pond would need to get into to it to sort out something or other so, question is, would the butyl stuff puncture easily if a 16-stone guy walked on it?

cheers.