Building a Koi Pond
Often times customers will ask us to do something we have never done before. Of course I always say “YES!” Then my crew and I will do a little pow-wow and figure out how to do it. Occasionally we will tell our customer ‘this is new to us but we will do it for cost and you get to be our experimental model’. They are excited to see how we do it and we are excited to do something new. Most of the time we do a ‘mock up’ or try it for display. We want to be sure that something works before we put it into a landscape. We are always learning and experimenting to perfect our craft.
For today’s case we are building a koi pond. My babies moved with me and they needed a new home. They have spent the last month in a 300 gallon stock tank.
We have a customer that we helped with a koi pond for a couple of years ago. She had concrete planters in the back garden. We blocked one off and left it as a planting bed. The other bigger portion we dug out, plumbed and created a pond with a waterfall. In her project we used a spray on poly urea liner. The fabric was laid and the liner was sprayed against the wall and over the fabric. The wall was capped with black slate and it looks beautiful.
Here is the Slate Pond on Bainbridge Island before. It was concrete block and dirt.
Here is the finished koi pond…
To start the koi pond at the beach house we brought in the big diggers to start and then finished off by hand.
For my koi pond we are using a rubber liner. The company that does the spray on was too busy spraying ponds for shrimp farming (who knew?). The challenge here is to get the liner to stick to the concrete block we used. We need to get the liner to attach to the concrete block and then we will put the stone on the top. We tried liquid nail (a construction glue) but it did not work. I went to a fabulous store called Atlas Supply where they have all types of adhesive! They are experts so they asked about what I was doing and gave me just the right product. I used a structural adhesive called M-1 and that did the trick. The liner is laid down and stuck to the top of the wall. Now time to fill the pond and move the fish.
When koi move they get a little freaked out and think that everything is out to get them. They jump and sometimes make it right out of the pond. I lost one that way because he jumped at night and I didn’t find him until the morning which was too late. Another one jumped during the day and I found him outside still breathing. He had been out a long time but I dumped him back in the tank and he survived and is happy. When I moved them to the bigger pond I put a piece of netting over the top to keep them in and predators out. That was in place for a couple of weeks and then I changed it to a wire cross wire system. I want to keep eagles and osprey’s from diving into the pond to fish for their supper. Unfortunately it did not keep this curious heron from investigating.
This weekend I will set up a wire around the perimeter to keep them from landing on the edge of the pond. I’m still working on the top and edges of the pond and will keep you posted on the continuing saga.
