I don't use the pond for swimming. In the summer it's full of frogs and Goldfish. Runoff from the roof doesn't seem to hurt the wildlife. My house has 'comp'. The cabin below has Cedar shakes. Thuja plicata. I have several ponds. Sometimes the kids and friend's dogs swim in the lower pond. It has frogs and fish too. Herons and Kingfishers get some of the Golfish. That's why I don't buy expensive Koi. The cabin is a hangout I built a over twenty years ago. Man cave. ;-) Mike

Chubbypoptart The hole originally measured about 16 feet wide and 24 feet long and about 3 feet deep. The legnth shrunk a bit with building the falls and depth is a little more now, I think about 40" since the water is above ground at the surface. I ordered a 30x40 foot firestone pond liner which was an over estimate. We could have got by with a 25x35 foot liner. I think the cost of the liner was close to $900. My guess is 5000 gallons. The pump is 7000 GPH pump, I went bigger since the hose to the fall is over 20 feet long I thought I might loose some pressure. The pump was about $275.00. Everything else I scrownged or had. I probably spent another $600 on plants. So total price I guess would be about $2000.00 with all the odds and ends. As far as getting it smooth it was easy. Our soil is a sandy loam with no rocks so we just used a flat head shovel to flatten the surfaces. Yes, all dug by hand by my dear husband and son in law. Sanctified, I used Glover Nursery in West Jordan and Earth Systems on 9th east and about 7300 south and a couple online stores. I could not get the liner locally since it was so large. The rocks were collected from Stansbury Island, Skull Valley, the Delle exit off I-80 and west of Utah Lake. I think they found the red ones west of Utah lake. Don't blame you for not doing a pond in WVC, I hear the ground is rocky and impossible to dig in.

You are absolutely right, it is misleading. Really I think the real truth of the mater lies somewhere in between " should never swim in your pond" and "perfectly safe", however you convinced me in your last thread that it is ok to take an extreme viewpoint for,,, emphasis,,, shall we say, no mater how misleading it may be. If I'm going to get "punished" for doing so, so be it, I can take it. An about the assumption that all these swimming ponds don't have fish in them, guess again. Here is a excerpt from one of the articles : "No blue tiles and chemically treated water for these folks. They much prefer to swim in natural ponds surrounded by colourful aquatic plants and, in the case of Heidersdorf, whose pool was designed and built by fellow artist Sylvain Racine, a handful of beautiful koi. "Over the years they have become very friendly," says Heidersdorf, a painter who own La Palette Gallery in Beaconsfield. "They swim alongside me." I know some people in this forum don't think it's safe to swim in backyard ponds, and even go to the point of trying to forbid others to speak of it, but the truth is lots of people swim (or at least wade) in their backyard ponds with no ill effects. The links in this thread show that the trend goes beyond just the occasional dip, that people are designing the ponds for the purpose of swimming. Are these ponds totally safe? Truthfully there is no way of rendering any body of water (natural or man made) totally safe and consistently free of pathogens and harmful amoeba, but does that mean we should never swim in them? It's sort of like driving on the city streets and highways. Are they safe to drive? No it's not completely safe, there is always some sort of danger out there ready to harm or kill you, but do we drive anyway? for the most part I think most of us do. I guess that the decision lands on each individual to make that assessment based on his own individual, and hopefully, properly informed choice. I do know that there are people out there who have never swam before in there lives and have always avoided the water like the plague. So maybe that has something to do with the differing opinions in this forum. Personally, in my childhood I swam just about daily in the local lakes and streams. The worse thing I ever got was swimmers itch, but I learned how to avoid that by drying off as soon as I got out of the water. I did, for the most part, avoid stagnant ponds, only jumping in once in a while to grab a turtle or a frog.

OMG she can't state what she read, and try to inform people about this? Geez, if you don't have anything nice to say then DONT say anything! If you can get it from a poorly maintained SWIMMING pool, then in my eyes you can get it from a backyard pond in which you NEVER put chlorine.. Supposedly some of you say "only" in "natural" warm bodies of water...well, the way I see it is that if your pond is around long enough you can pretty much call it a "natural" environment for the things that have been living in it for years. With everything we put in our ponds..fish that may have parasitic problems..plants from nurseries where god only knows what was in their water..plants you yourself go into a streambed or wherever and transplant to your pond yourself..birds and other critters dropping by after being in a "natural" pond or lake, ALL of these could very easily bring these amoeba ( and god knows what else) into your lil safe backyard pond. Also, backyard ponds tend to warm up faster than "natural" lakes and ponds because they are smaller, so maybe they can breed there faster...So IMO there is def a chance of these amoeba being in our lil pond sanctuaries in our backyards...unless your ponds are in safety bubbles, anything can be in there. That's just my 2 cents..Oh I could go on , but someone needs to feed these children who call me mom, and for some reason the lil critters claim it's my responsibility, so I'm off.. Daniella :)