OK this post is not for those of you who still are using the 56K modem. I finished my pond today after over a week of killer work in our wonderful 96 degree heat. My neighbor was kind enough to do the rough digging with his backhoe and then I went to work. I have worked on this every day for the last 8 days, getting up most mornings around 5AM to avoid the heat as much as possible. (It didn't work - when I finished for a day I could ring out my clothes.) I never drank so much water in my life.

Here is what I started with when I bought the house. The three tiny fish were in a precast pond that was about 25 gallons. The two fish still alive are now about 12" long

So here are the details. First you have to make sure the edges are level. Of course mine were not so I had to build up the short side. I did this because of the solid rock we ran into about 18" deep and I wanted the pond to be 24" deep. So here is how it starts:

Here is the sold rock in the bottom of the pond.

After leveling the sides here is what you have:

I spent the better part of one day running the electrical. Digging that trench by hand was not a lot of fun. Like I mentioned before I had already run PVC pipe under the porch when I had it pored so that saved a lot of work.

Once you think you have everything set you put in the special liner and do what you can to get rid on any kinks.

I had a very nice pond filter that I bought at a yard sale a few years ago already running on the small pond. The problem is that since I was building a waterfall the filter would have to sit on top and there was no good way to hide it. So being a decent engineer I decided to build my own filter that would be pressure tight out of a 5 gallon paint bucket. I spent 4 hours at Lowes trying to get the right plastic pipe fittings to make a pressure tight seal on the bucket(that was not my fault - they sold me a hose but had no fittings anywhere that would connect to it!). I finally got fitting, glue, gasket material, hose, etc. and built the filter. I was very proud of my design and knew it would work just like I planned. Ah the best laid plans......it turns out that the 1800 Gallon per hour pump built up so much pressure that the top on the bucket bulged way up and caused the sides to leak. I had to go back to the old filter temporarily until I can get something more substantial. Here is the filter I built.