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!

Love your pond and kitty that is 'on guard'!I would like to suggest some trailing plants to help hide your hardware. Some that come to mind is verbena, blooms all summer in my garden, also vinca vine grows well, but if it gets loose on the ground can be invasive. If you plant them in their own pot, they are easier to control.Those wave petunias would also give lots of color...good luck and keep posting those pictures!

Smokeynite seaming two pieces of liner together is not easy. Than add the problem that one or both pieces are installed and that makes it harder. I have seamed lots of liners together and from what you discribe you are not going to be able to seam them the way you want to. The first thing that needs to happen is the liner for the small pond needs to be removed so that at least one liner is wrinkle free. Using just the double sided tape is not going to work. If you are going to use just one tape than use the 6 inch wide cover tape. You will need a board that is wide and long enough so that the seaming can be done on the board. It helps to have at least two or three sets of hands to get everything laying flat. You will also need some liner primer. It is a littleeasier if you use both the double sided and the cover tape but the cover tape is a must. The cover tape has to be long enough to cover the seam as one piece. The trick is that there can not be any wrinkles in the liner and cover tape or it will leak. I know this is easier said than done. You have to tape along a straight line no curves. I am going to discribe how to seam the liners just using cover tape but if you are going to use double sided tape first just follow the same procedure as the cover tape. Clean at least six inches on each side of the joint of the liner that will come in contact with the tape. Let that dry. Than apply the primer to that area. Let it dry. Now comes the hard part. Start at one end of the seam. With the seam laying on the board get as long a section from where you are starting to tape to lay flat. This may just be a few inches to several feet. Peel just a couple of inches of the protective backing off the tape. Place the tape on the joint so that the joint is right in the middle of the tape and the tape is going straight on the seam. Press the tape to both liner and seal the tape to the liner. Slowly pull more backing off the tape and as you do this slowly press the tape on to the joint. When you get to about one inch from the first wrinkle stop. You can normally remove the wrinkle by moving both pieces of liner and tape in the direction that you started from. Don't worry about wrinkles in the two pieces that are taped together as they will wrinkle the same. Now lay as long a section flat and continue removing the backing on the tape and connecting the joint together. Go to about one inch from the next wrinkle and repeat the previous steps. Do this until the complete joint is made. If you have not allowed a wrinkle to be covered with a flat piece or section of tape the joint will not leak. I know it is hard but it is doable. Mike

I was just thinking the same thing as chas045. Last winter was our first with our new pond. We'd just completed it in fall. We didn't know if we should keep the waterfall running over the winter, but before we could make other plans we got lots of snow & sub-freezing weather that didn't stop until there was ice on the sides of the waterfall stream. By then it was too late to drain the filtration system so we just continued to run it all winter, and there was nothing we could do about the ice build-up. Anyway, in spring we noticed the pond losing water much faster than normal. What we discovered was the ice (or combination of ice & dirt settling on the new waterfall structure) had cracked the mortar around the rocks that formed the sides of the waterfall on one side, right at the top, and also right under the waterfall box (see close-up pic). The dirt-covered structure in the upper right is the waterfall spillway. Ice formed mostly on one side, as you can see in the photo, and that's the side that eventually leaked. We are in VA so you could have it even worse in MN, even without your waterfalls running in winter. This allowed water to seep behind the rocks. Once it got behind those rocks, it made it's way down behind all the rocks on that side - between the rocks & the liner. But then near the bottom of the waterfall we had a steeper section & the water made it's way over the top of the liner & out of the pond. Once some of the rocks hiding the liner were removed, we could see where the water was running over the top. We never could tell it was leaking by looking around the landscaping there either, as it never appeared wetter than elsewhere.