Simply Koi and More Koi

This is the my growing on pond build. I'm building it in my cowshed, internal dimensions about 10' x 5' x 3'6" deep giving approx 1,000 gallons. It will be standalone and built on a 9" thick concrete pad on top of the existing concrete floor (to enable a bottom drain to be installed and to provide additional strength to thte existing concrete floor. Filtration will initially be via a Cloverleaf CL3 converted to static and fluid K1 (courtesy of Andy in Colchester). Plumbing for a skimmer will be installed with a long term aim of using a Bakki shower with BHM media as the sole means of filtration.

I will update it as work progresses. Any comments, recommendations, abuse, etc welcome.

My main purpose in posting this is to encourage others who think they are incapable of building their own pond to give it a go. I have never laid a block or mixed concrete in my entire life. I have done a bit of research and asked a lot of questions here, so theoretically I have an idea of how things should progress!

Here are most of the materials as delivered. Sudden pang of 'Oh, what have I done!"

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Next I laid out the blocks to get a rough idea of dimensions for the concrete pad. A course of blocks will be used to contain the pad and add some additional strength. This seemed to take ages - getting joint widths for joint widths.

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I then laid the 4 corner bricks ensuring all were levelled (floor slopes in two directions because it's original purpose was to ensure a smooth flow of cow "slurry" into a drain. The rest of the course was then mortared into position and the bottom drained positioned and secured at the correct height (sorry about slight blurring of the image).

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The base was then filled. My neighbours very kindly lent me their mixer and gave me a hand mixing and filling.

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Half filled with mesh in position
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Concreting complete - I've now just got to wait for it to dry out for a week!

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After a day I started to wonder if all was well with the curing qualities of the concrete. I was able to make marks in it with my fingernail. Further activity with a screwdriver suggested that below the surface layer it had the consistency of hard packed sand. I left it for a further three weeks having sought the advice of others that it might take longer to cure re. the cold weather and high humidity. I also made a tent over it and applied heat to it via an electric convection heater. Unfortunately it wasn't any better. It appears the problem was that there was insufficient cement in the mix - I couldn't see exactly how much was going in - I was responsible for pouring and tamping. I decided it would all have to come up. Although not cured it was still too compacted to use a pickaxe so I hired a Kango. It took 2 days just to hack it all up (about 4 tons of concrete) and wasn't helped by having an appalling hangover due to my first "proper" night out for 6 months. You can see how rubbish the mix was by the way I have managed to salvage all the reinforcement mesh for the next attempt.

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I am now in the process of barrowing the resulting spoil to a discrete spot in the garden (I'm going to use it for making paths around the vegetable garden).
I've decided that once everything is cleared I will use shuttering and ready mix to create the concrete pad - lifes too short to go through the same song and dance again! The whole thing should have been finised by now - instead I'll be clearing up the crap for another couple of weekends before I can start again.

Jon,

Dare I ask what happenned to the cows?

Great start though and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the build.

Hi Bob

They disappeared 20 years ago! I don't have the least inclination to bring 'em back either. Too much like hard work for not much money.

Cheers

Jon

Nice tractor Jon. I see a bigger shed behind that would make a nice long growing on pond location. What do you think?

Why did you use 2 x 45 deg elbows on the bottom drain? why didn't you use 1?

Jules

Hi Jules

Unfortunately that's not mine. Belongs to my neighbours (as does the tractor). However my shed is 52 feet long so I reckon I could get another 5 or 6 growing on ponds in should I feel the urge!.

I used the 45 degree bends so that the bottom drain exits the pond at one corner and a 90 degree angle to thepond wall.

Cheers

Jon

Hi Jon,

Great stuff and i was wondering when you was going to post

I like Jules would of used 1 45 so it would of been the angle of the pipe and then just the 45 on the end to make the pipe center.The idea is to have as lest restriction as possible so always use sweeping bends or two 45 for etc.

Don't panic as it will work fine mate

Hi Gazza

Groan! The penny has just dropped; I now see what you mean! I can feel a pair of grey furry ears sprouting. I can't actually believe I've been that stupid. To be honest I only had 5 minutes to cut and glue the pipes because my neighbours appeared a day early to lay the pad. Suddenly everything was all action and no thought. Do you think it will make that much difference to the flow? I was planning to use an Aquamax 10,000 which should have a reasonable amount of poke given the lenght of the pipe run and the volume of water.

Cheers

Jon

Hi Jon.

The 4 inch pipe will never have a full flow through it with a Aqua' 10,000 pulling so you need to either have enough loss of head in the filters so you can purge the drain weekly either into the first chamber or to waste. I would if doing the secon option put a 4 inch sight glass on the waste so you can keep an eye on anything that comes out especialy small koi! Also maybe have a small net to catch any "escapee's". Don't worry about the bends lesson learned and we have all done daftr things when under pressure. Measure twice, think about it measure again and then cut.

Good luck and have you decided on filtration yet?

Jules

Hi Jules

I thought I would get a reasonable pull with the 10,000. Not sure what you mean by needing to have enough loss of head - I always thought the idea was to minimise headloss? Do you mean that there will be settlement of crap in the bottom drain pipe because the 10,000 doesn't have sufficient pulling power?

As far as filtration goes I have a settlement vortex followed by a Cloverleaf CL3 converted to static and fluid K1. I will subsequently add a a Bakki shower with BHM.

Cheers

Jon

Jon what I mean is the you will need to flush the bottom drain to get rid of settlement in the pipe. Idealy you need to drop the level in your settlement chamber to allow this to flush all the waste out. Does this make sense?

Jules

Hi Jules

I think so - I do this on my outside pond on a regular basis and haven't experienced any problems with significant settlement in the pipework despite it being quite a long run to the vortex. There will be a waste pipe which bypasses the entire filter system so that I can purge the bottom drain.

Cheers

Jon

Good skills Sir.
Keep up the good work.

Jules