Liner, Liner, Pond's On Fire!

We made some big progress this last weekend on the pond: the liner. A single sheet of EPDM rubber about 16' x 25' really weighs a lot. But, after 2500lb. rocks, we weren't about to let a little ol' chunk of rubber get in our way.


The hard part of the liner was installing the spill rock into place. We carved out a place for it, then realized we would be setting it too low, so we had to backfill the spot. Still too low. So, we had to prop it up with wall rock and stabilize it; all told, that took the majority of Sunday to achieve. You can just make out the edge of the spill rock poking from under the liner in this shot. 210 lbs is no big deal for a rock, but we had the added problems of manuevering it into the right place over the rubber without tearing it. We had to move it 3 times before we got it right. More pics here and here.

Once we got the spill rock in place, we added grey basalt into the pond to start hiding the liner and making it look like a pond and less of a large black hole in the ground. For this, we needed two trips to the rock store with the trusty truck (and undying thanks again to AKA Team for use of said beastie), at about 1300lbs of rock per trip. Ouch.

Finally, we set all the stone we had (still not enough!), when it started to rain. Now, Pacific Northwest rain is not like Austin, TX rain. Usually it's just an annoying drizzle, but we actually got more rain on Sunday than we have in a couple months! The pond started to fill up, and now has about 9 inches of water in it. It's a bit premature, don't you think?!?!?!

Next stop: waterfall and stream. We're working from the spill rock upstream to make sure we get the flow right. Stay tuned...