Hello Greenskinnydipper, The swim area- are you using this as a swim pond? Are you getting the betonite liner that they use for waste systems and lakes? Never seen one except on the internet. I just am wondering about how much clay and debris is going to get in to that bottom drain. Usually you keep a flow thru the bottom drain pipe to keep it clear from debris. Do you want a skimmer to collect the blown in debris? Maybe you don't need one if you don't have nearby trees. Why do you have drains under the pond? Your pond bottom should slope to the bottom drain. So the rock wall will be hard to build. How are you going to keep that stable? Lots of questions. lol I am curious and can't wait to see pics when you start. Pond building is fun. We have an excellent resource member -MikeIL. He is an expert. He can give you the best advice possible. Drop him a note. Also sorry that this is hard to read. For some reason the format has everything double spaced and no extra lines for paragraphs. Regards, Lisa

jclimber, I've have a setup very similar to what you are talking about though my pond is only half the size, still large for an ornamental pond with goldfish. I have a Savio Skimmer with two pumps, one goes to a rapids effect at a small, small stream that feeds in under the biofilter fall, and, the other one pumps into the biofilter. I also have an upper pool and a lower pool separated by a wide but short water fall. The Savio Skimmer (full size) is located at the other end of the lower pool from the waterfall. My two magdrive pumps work fine. Laguna brand 3900 waterfall pumps. That all said, I would take ccoombs advice, no doubt. The number one problem with my pond is keeping the detritus and other junk off the bottom. In fact, you never can keep it off the bottom. The detritus is so fine that you only stir-it up if you get in to clean the pond. So my advice would be to go with the bottom drain setup but still use a skimmer box for the top floating stuff. Thanks for the btm drn link, ccoombs; I hadn't seen that... and thanks for the explanation of the bottom drain (not for draining, necessarily) because when I first heard about BDs that what I thought for sometime! I like the suggestions for saving money. If you can afford the time, better to make your own... esp. underlayment; I actually think old carpet (go dumpster diving at a carpet store) is superior to the underlayments I've laid hands on. Here's another suggestion: I'd get the rock out. It would be one thing if they were in the water atop the liner, but rolling liner up over them is just taking up space. Plus, you could use those big ones to help landscape at the edge. So it occurred to me when you talked about getting an electrician to bring a circuit out to the pond that this electrician is going to have to pay someone to trench. Most places are under the National Electric Code and that means burying the cable 30" or more... they're going to want to use a trencher. If you're going to have to get a trencher in for that you could save by getting a mini-excavator (rental from any tool/equip rental shop) and have it equipped with multiple bucket sizes... most come with options. get a slender bucket for the trench work, wider bucket for the rock. If an excavator can't lift the rock it should be able to beat on it enough to crack it smaller and scoop it out... of course, you could just pay someone to remove the large rocks. Whatever you decide make sure you have 'em mark the area for underground utilities. I really like your setup though. You never did say if you planned to have fish, what kind? Is that a german sheppard!? He/She will love the pond!

On leveling ground to make a pond work I have a 16" drop from the high end nearest the house to the 14'at the lower end from the fill needed to provide good runoff of rain. Starting at the high end, I dug the hole down 12", left a 12" wide ledge, went down 16", another 12" ledge and then down another 16". I used the diggings to level everything to about 16" up from the first ledge. Giving me about 48" total depth. I built a form to make trapezoid shaped concrete blocks 3" thick. Lots of work, but then what does a retiree have but time. The shape allowed me to form curved or straight lines around the pond to give it a roughly kidney shape. Ultimately, I used all the dirt to fill the concrete shape with no leftover. I gathered limestone rocks from the hillside beneath the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River and laid them on the concrete for a rugged, natural look. My grandson found a chunk of limestone with a roughly bowl shape that had a hole worn in the middle. He gave it to me to use as the "spring "inlet to the waterfall used for aeration. All this nearly 15 years ago. There are pictures buried somewhere around here. Maybe I can find them. Oh, yeah, the hole is lined with EPDM pond liner. After a disastrous massive dieoff 3 years ago, I ignored the pond for 2 years and am now trying to rejuvenate it again. So far I put in 12 feeder gold fish last summer. 2 died off, but I now have 10 healthy 4-5" common goldfish swimming in a very bare pond. I am waiting for planting weather so we can have some plant life again. I was at a funeral this morning and saw a nice peace lily. I remember when we had one in a large vase with a Beta living under the plant. Thought when it warms up I might try making a float and put in a peace lily. Thoughts?

I love garden tours. Wish I could've gone to this one. We need to remember to watch for it next year. Did anyone go? I'd love to see photos.