How Wide and Tall Is a 1000 Gal Blue Pond Container

In that location'southward something nearly h2o in movement that soothes the soul. Watching calorie-free play off the ripples or listening to the splash of a fountain—these are universally calming pastimes. It's no surprise, then, that one of the most popular landscaping projects for This Old Business firm readers is installing a swimming.

Happily, you don't need deep pockets or lots of country to enjoy your own water feature. You can install a fully equipped, landscaped, fish-filled swimming for around $500, provided that you practice your own digging. Creating a lush habitat like the one at right requires rubbery liners, powerful pumps, effective filters, and, without question, a delivery to care for them. Just when you're finished, whether it's tucked into a corner of the yard or side by side to a deck or patio, your pond will provide an endless source of fascination for family and visitors akin.

Anatomy of a Pond

A clean, healthy pond requires a few key elements to keep water contained, fresh, and filtered.

Water agitator: Keeps water oxygenated. Fountains, waterfalls, and bubblers are all agitators.
Filter: Cleans the water coming from the pump.
Liner: Prevents water from leaking into the ground.
Underlayment: Protects the liner from punctures and stretching during installation.
Pump: Circulates water through the filter and up to the waterfall or fountain.
Covered GFCI outlet: Feeds power to the pump. Trips automatically to prevent lethal shocks.

What to Know Almost Lawn Ponds

What practise backyard ponds cost?

Home-center kits offset at $70 for a elementary 9-foursquare-foot, 84-gallon swimming. A more typical 176-foursquare-footer installed by a pro starts at $five,000, while more grandiose versions can easily exceed $50,000.

DIY or hire a pro?

Ponds longer than six anxiety on a side and deeper than 18 inches require so much excavation and other heavy work that they are best left to pros. Smaller ponds are good DIY projects, simply let pros handle the plumbing and electrical work.

How long do they last?

It all depends on the liner. The best ones have a 20-year warranty and 30- to 40-yr life span.

How much maintenance?

The electricity to run a pump for a typical 176-square-foot pond costs well-nigh $260 a year. Filters need frequent cleaning. A pond-maintenance business firm starts at virtually $i,000 a year.

The location of a swimming determines its health and your power to enjoy it.

How much lord's day do they need?

Ideally, ponds should receive sunlight in the forenoon and shade in the afternoon. This keeps the water cooler, discouraging algae blooms.

What about overhanging copse?

A tree's afternoon shade is welcome, but a pond straight nether a tree's branches will quickly clog with leaves, seeds, or needles unless given constant maintenance. If a nearby tree is immature, gene in its mature spread before settling on the swimming'south location.

How far from the house?

Ponds that are out of sight tend to get neglected. And if they're farther than xx anxiety from your patio, you probable won't hear the gurgling of a waterfall or fountain.

What do the codes say?

Ask your local building department nigh how far a swimming has to be set back from belongings lines. Where are the utility lines? Dial 811 to have their location marked. This is a gratis service.

Types of Backyard Ponds

Natural

Meant to blend in like an integral role of the landscape, this kind of pond has complimentary-form edges that don't follow a straight or anticipated class, and incorporates stones and plants native to the area.

Seminatural

Taking cues from the existing hardscape around a dwelling, this most pop swimming type has free-form edges set side by side to a brick, physical, or stone patio. The plants can exist native or not.

Formal

Defined past geometric shapes, this style of pond is often edged in expensive mortared stone or poured concrete. Perfect for a reflecting pool in a formal garden, it also makes a fine showcase for fish. Plantings are sparse or nonexistent.

Must-Have Materials for Building a Pond

i. Liner

Use these formulas to summate how much material you'll demand (all dimensions in feet):

Liner length=swimming length+(2 ten depth)+ii.
Liner width=pond width+(ii x depth) +2.
Multiply liner length past liner width to get full square footage.

Constructed rubber

The best pick for well-nigh ponds, 45-mil-thick EPDM comes in sheets upward to 50 by 200 feet. Durable, UV resistant, and flexible to -40 degrees F. Not to be dislocated with covering EPDM, which has additives that impale fish.

Plastic

Liners made of polyethylene (PE) and reinforced polypropylene (RPP) are thinner, lighter, and less expensive than EPDM merely stiffer and harder to work with. Sizes up to forty,000 sq. ft. Like EPDM, they carry a twenty-year warranty. Avoid PVC liners; they take a short life span when exposed to sunlight.

two. Pump

At minimum, the gallons per hour (GPH) rating should lucifer the book of your swimming. A pump will demand boosted GPH to supply a waterfall or fountain, and enough "caput" to button h2o to the elevation of that waterfall or fountain. Await for the unit with the lowest wattage; information technology will cost the least to run.

Direct drive

These heavy-duty units, which were the starting time pond pumps, are able to motion lots of water. They also employ the most power, and if their seals fail, they can spill oil.

GPH: 1,500–16,000.
Caput: up to 52 feet.
Watts: 150–1,500.
Warranty: i to two years.
Cost: $200—$1,400. PondScapeOnline

Magnetic bulldoze

Much cheaper to purchase and operate than direct drives just without most equally much oomph.

GPH: 65–three,000.
Caput: up to 15 feet.
Watts: 25–350.
Warranty: vi months to three years.
Cost: $45—$300. Danner Manufacturing, Inc.

Hybrid bulldoze

Combines the power of a straight drive with the energy efficiency of a magnetic drive. Won't spill oil.

GPH: 1,200—10,000.
Head: upward to 25 feet.
Watts: 110—500.
Warranty: two years.
Cost: $185—$500. Atlantic H2o Gardens

iii. Filter

I type keeps water complimentary of debris so that the pump won't clog. The other removes chemicals that harm fish. To sustain fish, you'll demand both types or a product that puts both in i parcel.

Mechanical

Traps debris before it reaches the pump. Clean weekly in bound and fall, every other calendar week in summer, monthly in wintertime. A filter in a waterfall or a surface skimmer volition be easier to achieve than ane on a pump at the bottom.

Biological

A must for ponds with fish. Leaner living on a porous medium assimilate toxic nitrites and ammonia. Await vi to eight weeks for them to become established, or purchase a starter colony. No cleaning needed.

4. Water Agitators

A pond will become a stagnant, algae-filled eyesore if you don't go along its water moving and aerated. Here are three means to stir the pot:

Fountain

Water shooting up from the surface of the swimming or flowing from a human-made ornament is visually compelling and nice to listen to. Available in a variety of sizes and shapes, each linked to a detail pump capacity.

Waterfall

To create the prove y'all want, measure out its width in inches at the indicate water spills out. Multiply by 50 if you desire a trickle of water, past 100 for a sheet of h2o, and by 200 for Niagara Falls. The result is how many GPH your pump needs for the falls lone, non counting the swimming.

Bubbler

An air pump, a separate device from a pond pump, produces bubbles that subtly ripple the pond's surface.

Backyard Pond DIY Kits

Most online retailers packet the swimming essentials. Or yous tin buy a prepackaged kit from a abode centre that includes a rigid plastic tub, flexible tubing, and a properly sized pump. These kits are pocket-sized and manageable plenty to install in a weekend, but they don't include the biological filter you demand for fish.

Though you could add together such a filter, they're really intended to exist low-maintenance water features for people who want the pleasant audio of trickling water most a deck or patio, non a full-fledged ecosystem.

How to Prep for a Swimming Installation

Exercise yous desire fish? If so, build your pond at to the lowest degree 24 inches deep. That depth keeps the swimming from freezing in winter or overheating in summer. In extreme northern areas, the minimum depth should exist 3 feet.
Volition you need a fence? In some areas, local codes mandate that yards with ponds deeper than 18 inches be surrounded by a fence with a locking gate to keep out unsupervised children.
How will information technology be refilled? Ponds must be topped off periodically to replace water lost through evaporation or splashing. Y'all tin do the job manually with a garden hose or accept an auto-fill up valve continued to a buried h2o line. When using metropolis water, protect your fish by calculation a dechlorinator directly to the pond.
What well-nigh the leftover dirt? Digging fifty-fifty a pocket-size pond will create a large pile of soil. A hired installer should go rid of it for yous, but if you dig your own hole, use the soil to raise the class effectually the pond or to build a waterfall.
Where's the power? A weatherproof GFCI outlet to power the pump should be located at least x feet from the swimming. The electrical cable leading to that outlet needs to be buried at least 18 inches deep.

PRO TIP: Rather than slope the sides of a pond correct down to the lesser, make a shelf about 18 inches wide and eighteen inches below the water's surface all around the pond's edge. This shelf serves as a platform for plants and a convenient step for anyone who falls in.

—Demi Fortuna, August Moon Designs, Stony Brook, N.Y.

Best Plants for Backyard Ponds

Cattail (Typha latifolia)

Grows along pond edges, in moist soil or shallow water. Hollow stems carry oxygen to the root zone, and to fish, year-round. Perennial; spear-like foliage grows upwards to 10 anxiety tall.

Lotus (Nelumbo sp.)

Planted in containers up to 2 feet deep, it blooms on a stalk loftier above the h2o'southward surface. Perennial; leaves upwardly to 20 inches in diameter sway on stems that abound up to half dozen anxiety tall.

Iris (Iris versicolor)

Plant in pots in iii inches of water. Bears 5-inch-broad flowers in shades of bluish or royal on 24-inch stems. Tolerates partial shade. Perennial; arching leaves grow up to 30 inches alpine.

Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes)

A free-floating institute, it sends a 9-inch fasten of lavender flowers up from a rosette of leathery, sleeky green leaves. Perennial in Zones 9–11; often grown in colder climates as an almanac.

Best Fish for Lawn Ponds

Goldfish

The ultimate in depression-maintenance, goldfish can get by eating the plants, algae, and larvae they find. They'll alive most ten years and oftentimes grow up to 12 inches long.

Koi

Koi ofttimes live for 40 years or more and grow up to iii anxiety long, depending on the swimming's size. They must be fed regularly; you tin even train them to eat from your hand. They'll survive winters equally far north as Maine.

Solutions to Common Pond Bug

Algae

You can impale this green slime with chemicals or UV lights, but it will nonetheless come dorsum. You'll become amend results by adding plants, barley straw, or biomat filters, and not overfeeding the fish.

Mosquitoes

Keep the biters at bay by stocking larvae-eating fish, such as goldfish, mosquito fish, or bitterlings. Tossing in mosquito dunks with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) as well kills the larvae without harming plants or animals.

Pests

Deter raccoons with a straight drib of at least xviii inches from the pond's border. Nylon netting stretched over the surface discourages fish-eating birds. Move-activated sprinklers may scare off other interlopers.

Leaves

In the summer, sift out debris before it reaches the pump with a skimmer. Come fall, scoop out the bigger batches of leaves and needles with a swimming internet.

Ice

Identify an air bubbler or a floating pond heater into the corner of the swimming to go along a portion ice-free and maintain a proper balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

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Source: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/yards/21017991/everything-you-need-to-know-to-build-the-perfect-backyard-pond