DIY | Pond Turns Patio

I'm not even sure where to start with the story of our pond renovation.  It was a long one, and full of trial and error.  And more error at that.  I'll try to make it short and sweet, and helpful.

The pond was about 7'0"H x 4'0"W x 3'0"H and filled with mucky water when we moved in.  We had no idea where to start, but we knew we had to get rid of it (mosquitoes and raccoon paw prints were just two indicators it had to go).

This was the pond.  The pictures doesn't do it justice.  It was bad.

I did a lot of reading to get started.  Actually a lot of Googling.  I learned that there are really two camps on the subject of ponds: those that love them and those that hate them. 

By the title of this post, I'm assuming you can guess which camp I'm in.  I mean, a pond is nice and all.  But not if I'm the one maintaining it.

Lowe's has been our second home lately and they're always happy to answer questions.  We knew we had to drain the thing, but had no idea how to.  I for one wasn't reaching in with a bucket and we couldn't siphon it out because there was no slope. 

Lowe's solution: rent a garbage pump (there was a lot of crap in the pond that this would address) from United Rentals.

I rented the pump and attempted to drain the thing while my husband was at work.  Bad idea.  Really bad idea.  Lesson learned: draining a pond is a two person job!

Garbage pump inserted into the pond.

In the midst of drainage.  I was scrambling!

Garbage pump went in and the hose shifted to the neighbors front yard.  I was scrambling back and forth, making sure I didn't flood them out, and also making sure I didn't let the pump get above the water (this can burn it out and I didn't want to buy a non-working garbage pump).

Eventually the pond was empty.  And then it rained.  And rained some more.  I guess it wasn't summer in Portland yet.

Cut to a week later.  I knew I had to get some holes in this thing (it was concrete) in order to start draining any additional water.  I didn't want to have to rent the pump again.  So back to United Rentals I went.  This time to rent a hammer drill.

Seemed simple enough.  "The concrete doesn't have rebar in it, does it?" asked the guy at United.  "No, I don't think so." I responded.

You can see the hammer drill attempts on the left hand side.  It wouldn't even start to break through the bottom.

After about ten minutes of attempting to hammer drill into the concrete, I realized that some places did have rebar.  Damnit.

Back to the drawing board.  Again.

My husband had been sledge hammering the sides of the pond up to this point, but we decided we needed to bring out the big guns.  The bottom of the pond had to have holes in it to properly drain.  Enter the jack hammer.

So, jack hammers in the cartoons are a lot different than they are in real life.  Just an FYI for those (like me) that think they turn on and crumble the earth below them.  They actually just dig deep, narrow holes, and don't really break anything up around them.  Mind blown.  And not in a good way.

So finally, after jack hammering and more sledge hammering, we had the bottom broken up enough to where we felt comfortable filling it in.  Small pieces of the concrete were first.

I then found a girl on Craigslist who was willing to drop off fill dirt (she was digging out a patio).  She was nice enough to help me shovel it out on our driveway.  And then it started raining.  Hard.  I quickly covered it with a tarp to prevent a mud river.

Over the course of a couple days we began to shovel the pile into a wheelbarrow and transport it into the hole that was our pond.

This was a long process.  Much like any of my projects, had I known how long it would take, I probably would have loved having a pond.  Mosquitoes and all.

Back to Lowe's we went.  With about six inches left to fill, we bought landscaping fabric, paving gravel, paving sand, and large slate stones.  We also stopped by the tool library (yes, there is such a thing in Portland) and grabbed a tamper.

Landscape fabric

Paver gravel, Tamper, Paver sand, Repeat

HEAVY

Before the trimming the fabric and last layer of sand.

We tampered the fill soil.  Then we cut the landscaping fabric to the shape of the pond, covered it with a layer of the paving gravel, raked it level-ish and tampered it, covered with a layer of sand, raked it level-ish and tampered it, layed the stones, spread more sand, and swept everything into a place.

After a few days, we found the sand didn't look as good (mainly because our dog was digging in it).

So we removed all of the slate stones, raked the sand even, bought pebble stones, raked them level-ish, put the slate stones back in place (these suckers are heavy), and spread more gravel on top.





















It's been a day and looks great (please ignore the fact that the table needs to be refinished and the space styled and the house painted and my hair washed).  I'll let you know how it looks in a week.  Oh, and we did remove quite a few plants from the side of the garage.

Moral of the story?  Don't buy a house with a pond unless you want to keep the pond.