Pond for under $100

Well I wanted a pond, and I had an idea, and I had some lava rocks, and a pump, but no desire to dig up my lawn. Then it happened. My friend David helped me set up a cinderblock garden bed for my birthday. Looking at the cinder blocks made me think, man that was cheap, and easy, very easy. So I started thinking, what would it take to build a nice small water feature, just a place for a lily or two, and maybe some gold fish. Now I have 5 cats, and the pond needed to be twice their reach, so I started playing with the dimensions. A standard cinder block is 16 x 8 x 8 inches, this makes measuring easy, but you are kind of limited to squared construction, in this manner. There are others who leave spaces in their blocks and get lots of different shapes. You can also just use the blocks to build the frame, and cover it with rocks and dirt, or concrete as many others have done. The first shot is me laying out a rough size, and putting a pot in the middle as a water feature. I used a foam pot, as it was free, and easy to drill a hole in the bottom. It took 3 trips to home depot using a Dodge intrepid and one in a Saturn L. At 1.27 each, and .67 for the caps, it is a cheap project. I used about 5 bags of playground sand as a leveling media. Wet the sand, it levels better.

Now you can see the frame I built, this is about 4 feet wise by 7 feet long. A nice size for a gazing pond, and would be great for a lilly and a couple of marginal plants in pts. I laid the first course out, put sand in the holes of all the blocks, then used a 2 x 4 x 10 and a level to square and level. It is easier this way, you roughly level the ground first, then put the blocks down, add some sand, and then test for level, then just raise the block, the sand flows out and you can level it pretty dog gone fast. Once I got it all level I used black duct tape, since I had it, to cover the inside edges of the blocks, to help reduce abrasion on the liner. The liner cost about as much as all the blocks, really. The fun part was putting the liner in, rough fitting it, then adding water, and pulling out wrinkles and generally playing in the water. With my normal backyard pressure garden hose, it took me about 20 minutes to fill the pond. Make sure you spread a good 2 to 3 inches of sand as a base, and rake out any rocks.



Here is the pond filled, okay overfilled as you can see from the wet part. That is also where I climbed int ot work on it. You can see the lava rock and some of the tools used in the background. At this point the formation of the pond was set, and for my labors of approximately 1 hour I had in place a cool little pond, with a grecian style overflowing pot fountain.

And this is the pond once I got the pump in place, and put in the rough test plumbing (okay short garden hose). I worked on this quite a bit off and on, and now it looks completely different. Now looking back, maybe I should have stopped here. This is what I know now after building this:

• You CAN buld a water feature in an hour for around $100 bucks. But you might get the urge to change it later...
• Okay under $100 bucks because I already had a pump.
• You will likely get the urge to change or upgrade
• The bricks will move if you don't anchor them with mortar, or at least construction adhesive
• This kind of pond is not quite deep enough to keep goldfish, they say. And if you are keeping fish, you will need a splashing pump to get the water to move and aerate the system
• Buy the rubber liner, it is really not that more expensive, and is MUCH better.

Okay, so you want a pond? get on line, look around and ask around. Lots of people with ponds have excess plants they will give you. I will post some more pix of my pond, and my friends ponds as they grow and change.

Have fun and get wet.