Eric's Ponds 2002-03 - No end in sight

No end in sight - 2002

January 31, 2002		February 2, 2002
Taking advantage of some abnormally warm weather, I built this gazebo in January 2002. A door in the floor of the gazebo opens up to give access to several drain valves. The drain valves can be used to flush the stream and keep any waste from going to the bottom pond

February 25, 2002

I destroyed the original 120 gallon top pond. The pond was so small that I was loosing a lot of water due to splash from the waterfall.

March 19, 2002

I used excess dirt from digging the new top pond to build up the ground by the bottom pond. This would help give me a level place to put our swing.

March 29, 2002

The top pond is elevated about 3 feet above the bottom pond, so I built this 'landscaping timber' wall between the two. This wall is reinforced with 12 cu. ft. of concrete

The top pond in this photo is almost ready for the liner.

March 29, 2002

In March, I got my very much wanted external Sequence pump.

April 12, 2002

In this photo, I am leak testing the top pond bottom drain piping. It is capped and full of water.

(left) Top pond EPDM liner

(right) This photo shows a 3" drain line from the space beneath the pond deck. A week after purchasing my external pump, a flash flood submerged the external pump. It survived and still works great to this day. This new drain pipe makes sure that never happens again. The photo also shows the waterwheel in it's new location. We decided to move the wheel back so we could see the fish better.

April 18, 2002

May 21, 2002

	The top pond is 650 gallons and reaches 2ft. deep. It has a 3 inch bottom circulation drain and a skimmer. I really liked the cave on the original top pond, so I decided to include a cave on the new top pond. In the back of the cave is a 2 inch inlet pipe that is used to bypass the waterfall.
July 9, 2002		August 27, 2002

November 22, 2002

These doors give acces to various valves, filters, and electrical, for the top and middle ponds.

All three ponds are connected, but with the turn of a couple of valves, the top pond can be isolated from the other two. A submersible pump is then used to run the top pond.

2003	The year 2003 was a slow year around the pond. I did get some much needed landscaping work done, which included spreading four tons of pea gravel around the ponds. Oh, and I took a lot of pictures.
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