How to Build a Backyard Pond in ONE Day steps 8-20

so this is the now in my world I'd call this Boulder fabric but what do you tell this guy's this is a nonwoven geotextile underlayment fabric heavy heavy duties this different great we have a heavier duty than this okay so this is your just your standard stuff in and what this does this prevents the EPDM liner from getting ripped torn or ruptured by any sharp objects underneath it correct now if you're in really bad soils you got a heavier duty much heavier duty fabric right correct the other thing that this does is it increases the load bearing capacity of the soils so by having a geotextile like this it's gonna spread the weight out over a bigger area and gives us a little more structural stability and it allows the bottom of the pond to breathe so it allows moisture and gases to wick out from underneath so yeah if you didn't know what I thought about with carpet you can use carpet as an underlayment but obviously they've got this down to a science don't break the pattern I said that earlier now I need to I need to live up to what I'm saying if you guys are just tuning in this is part two we are going to teach you guys how to build an 11 by 16 pond that's a full-size pond with a waterfall in five hours we're also going to lay out exactly how many tons of boulders and stones you need about what size of those materials that you have to have what pond kit to buy and where to buy it and exactly how many labor hours total you should invest in a project like this by the time you're done with this two-part video you should feel pretty comfortable being able to go out onto a jobsite and tackle a job like that that's the goal of this video if you guys are looking at installing ponds and this was not enough information for you go to Gregg's channel what talent you want them to go to Team Aqua skate aquascape is the construction Greg what's like the pond guys live in the aquascape lifestyle so make sure you go to those channels I'll link them down below I'm all see you guys I'm going to link the kits down below my link everything that's going okay so why legs working on the line or you guys actually have a system down for what the next steps are yeah so at this point you know all of us been working together as a team to get to this stage right here our rocks were delivered at nine o'clock 9:30 super super important your rocks have to be there but before this is done being excavated if the rocks show up at one o'clock there goes our one day pod we're never gonna finish this thing because we started rocking the pond too late in the date so we've gone to the end of the driveway three of us have pulled off to go get the rock one guy is staying back getting some of the wrinkles out he's gonna hook up the skimmer those three guys are gonna use the wheelbarrow in the tree dolly to start bringing rocks to the edge of the pond once there's a decent sized pile of rocks at the edge of the pond then we start handing them to each other to rock the pond and at a certain point that we put in the lights after the lights are in then we go get the gravel but we've all been working together as a team the or building a one-day pond no matter what the pond needs to be rocked in before we break for lunch so even during lunch something's happening to finish the pond it's filling up with water cause it's gonna take a few hours for this thing to fill up so you want to take advantage of that 45-minute hour lunch break whatever your lunch break is to achieve another step and it'll be filling up then after lunch it's really close to being filled a couple guys go work on the waterfalls and the other guys can start doing the edge treatments along the edge and they can do the edge treatments that much more accurately because the ponds already full and that makes sense what time for a one day pond what time do you start on-site we're usually there by 8:30 you know we show up at 8:30 at the latest 8 o'clock push lunch if you have to a half an hour an hour just to get to that stage hold get sign this guy goes down to a science we can love I love it when this is you're watching 25 years of experience of trial and error and all that didn't work and this didn't work and these guys actually literally created these kids because they got sick of using other people's garbage they got this all down so what are we looking at right here you guys so this is our skimmer assembly so what this is gonna do it's going to make a watertight seal between the liner and the skimmer box itself it's going to allow water to go from the pond into our pump so we have a this type of an assembly this is an adjustable faceplate so in case we're off a little bit on our transit measurement it gives us a little bit of flexibility we could raise or lower this by three inches so it could increase water level or decrease it accordingly to make sure that we fine-tune it exactly this can be a little bit confusing so just make sure that you line the the two on the bottom one on the top okay those machine screws act as guides so let's just slide through the top two corners like so hands-free now and hands kind of but these the ends of them here they're machined to be almost what all's right whole bunches right so the liner will actually penetrate these will penetrate through the liner so I'm gonna put a bead of silicone around the perimeter right here covering up all those holes and that's the vet plate goes over the liner so overlying it goes up okay got it okay so the silicone doors the champ raining put it down and bust your teeth up eyes up eyes up ears open keep this liner nice and hot and smooth right it's always nice if you can give yourself a little bit of slack you know like a little 4 4 inch fold of liner down below the skimmer so that if you ever have to possibly reseal this thing or if maybe it shifts or something with the Heavin thaw and some of the northern climates with the freeze/thaw cycle it's a little bit easier post-installation to fix so I'm gonna make sure that stays up nice and high there we go yep now I'm gonna take the face plate okay remember one on the top two on the bottom okay okay slide it up there I pull this out makes it again make sure that liner is nice and taut through there you don't have any wrinkles can make things make your life difficult right okay so now what I'll do so I've got that got the liner and you pressed up in there I've got my all so you just punctured the liner down at the bottom okay that's got to be a nerve-wracking part of it oh look you know it can be any time you make a puncture cool on the liner but these are repairable too so they are but you don't want to you don't want to write on that promise yeah you don't want to do it on purpose right just come over here now this is where that suck you die if you don't have long arms can come into play yeah you don't want to go to notes with the screwdriver days you don't want to put a hole in there you know yeah it's like go so ed you're just piecing together the walls the the contours right now exactly and one of the things you noticed I'm starting on the top hole even though other people are working in here you want to start I should say at the bottom I'm starting on the bottom the reason I'm doing that is it's gonna pull the liner in place if I were to come in here and start setting work all the big ones on top it'll end up putting tension on the liner and then all of a sudden the liner is not kind of conformed everything I had to get a couple bucket loads of gravel start filling in behind those rocks so kind of locked everything in place what if they don't put anything in the pond if they don't put anything in the pond the problems gonna be multiple things number one biological filtration by having all the rock and gravel every square inch of this rock is going to become a habit at home for algae for different types of microorganisms which are food for the fish as well as they help to control water quality next thing that's gonna happen is you're not gonna have any ballast and so you don't have any rocks down here in the bottom every spring I guarantee it you're gonna get a big bubble underneath the bottom of the liner and that's because you have water coming in so water is going to displace water very easily this pound for pound per cubic foot is much heavier than water obviously that's going to give it weight down the bottom it's going to push the water through our fabric which is also part of that system and allow it to go into the surrounding area the other thing that it's going to do it's going to look idiots by not having any rock and gravel inside of this thing it's gonna look awful final thing is all of that soil what's holding it in place if you were gonna do a retaining wall at somebody's homes you're not just gonna cut out a section of soil in the leave it exposed they'll eventually slump over so eventually if there was no stone here this is gonna start collapsing in and then the pond will slowly implode on itself and I got a question for you you put a lot of artistic design into this can I see right behind you you know why because nobody's gonna see it they're gonna see it because our viewing area is right there and the water is gonna be crystal-clear and it's getting rid of that where you've necklace ring a pearl necklace type of all look so by having these little unique things it just adds interest and and that's the fun part of the job you know you're always thinking of okay fine this is how I want this to look viewing looking down creating layers and structures and breeding areas for fur fish etc okay so destination Boulder is luck so when we explain rocks to customers these types of rocks would not need to come walk up on the edge of the pond because of the round nature of them the size of them I always say either you're falling into the rocks falling in right a destination Boulder is a little bit bigger Rock flatter surface the kind of rock that invites you to walk up and stand up on top of it and so we call them destination boulders some people call them fish feeding rocks you know stuff like that we've got but rocks destination boulders waterfall stones what's a butt Rock put your butt on it sit down sit up like a rocket would sit on well it'd be very close to the destination Boulder people that interact with the pond as much as possible that's just part of the reason bringing it close to the main viewing area but kids will be kids there's no way you're going to keep kids there on the deck or the patio so if you give the kids and adults like a place to actually walk to then they'll focus on those areas okay so Edie and Tim right now we're working on digging out for the frame rocks they'd add exactly so we're thinking about where the waterfalls going we're making a series of ledges that the boulders are gonna sit up we're also kind of getting the vision of how we want that water to twist and turn its way around so let's look at a set of frame rot out waterfalls go by the formula of having to frame rocks and then a waterfall in between look at this rain rock frame Rock waterfall in between frame Rock raindrop waterfall in between it's a very simple formula it's works it's over and over again and it actually looks very natural okay you guys it's time for a time update we set the timer when we started at 1600 this morning we're at 20 hundred but technically the clock says we've been working on this for four hours but we add an hour break for a photo session for you guys and then we had an hour for lunch so realistically we've got to take two hours off that clock that means we've we're literally two hours into this project and this is where we're at right now so you guys don't mess around with filling it and you give on that right away don't what's that fill in the pond we a so like I said before lunch we really want to get this thing filling it so at this point like I can tell that there's probably only another 15 minutes to rock in that section there Kristen's kind of tidying up some stuff over here so I'd come in here start rinsing from the top down moving all the debris and dusted everything down to the lowest point we put a clean-out pump down there and we pumped this dirty water out so it starts pumping out clear at that point we'll start filling it I strongly suggest getting a water meter so you can attach a water meter to the end of the hose and it'll count how many gallons you're putting in the pond because every homeowner wants to exactly every homeowner wants to know exactly how many gallons are in the pond and so it'll tell you to the gallon how many gallons are in here that way then they can accurately add the necessary water treatments and stuff like if you don't have a water meter something we've done in the past we get time filling up a 5-gallon bucket and then just do the math oh yeah [Music] yeah we started at 1600 the Brian's checking all of the water elevations so he knows right where this water is gonna be out and if you know worst case scenario you could drop the water down a pitch to be good right you can drive them out of the adjustable faceplate yeah drop that down we could split it yeah I was gonna say you could drop the water elevation down by about an inch factor security yeah and it wasn't really impact what's going on out he was treated by I got it so you guys manually raised it up at we did it all right she raised it up to get your elevation change so you feel the fabric back put more soil in place raised it up that way you got your comfort zone established for your overlap yep so we're looking at the edge treatment I see you don't have the ring of pearls and so edge treatment is probably the most critical part when you start doing the detail stuff and that's because that's what the people are going to see that's where people are going to come into contact with it we have our deck we have the viewing areas we have a little walkway cutting across so as people are interacting with the water feeds are the first thing that they're going to notice is where the water ends the rocks are there and then the landscaping begins so you want to write a really unique transition you don't want it to look man-made you don't want it to look perfect should have differences in elevation you said a big boulders little boulders River rock planted pockets decks different hardscapes and things coming into contact with it because that's really what gives it that naturalistic appearance that's what really makes it all work together so the edge treatment takes time we're trimming we're tucking the liner we don't want to just randomly come in here and start throwing gravel all over the stuff you see we have very strategic locations big rock different types of river rock we have soil coming right up to the back of those stones all of those are going to create different viewing areas and it kind of plays with the senses a little bit all right so you get installing stumble into the spillway and you have a cover that goes over the top of that no this is left open so you ask you one this is creating like pool just like another pool of the water feature this is going to well up with water and overflow we need to get to those skimmers are these filter pads once a year for cleaning so we don't want to totally cover it up the other thing that we'll do is we'll put aquatic plants up inside of here okay so you have plant Edie can you pull of Ryan one you guys can you pull that pad up so these guys can see the skimmer pads that everybody's talking about but you have to be able to get to those just see this slot right here yep that's that allows you to be able to pull these out without having to take the whole tray out changed once a year yep washed up watch.watch well washed up yep okay cuz those things last for a long time now word of caution you've got to buy pond it safe filter pads don't go to Bernards and you'll see rain gutter filter pads that goes in there you can't use breaker with other material because they actually have agents in there that will kill the fish all right so now we are coming in we actually asked about a cover over this and a lot of people will do that they'll just take a big piece of slate and put it over the top of that if you think about it it's kind of like which rock doesn't belong but everything's been round and and a certain look and then to take this big thin piece of slate and put it on top looks ridiculous then you're putting stuff on top of the slate to try to hide the piece of slate usually enscape so give me a plan a like a polka Tony yes or hosta you know a Hopson will work right so you get a like a sum and substance hosta that gets this big okay half the plant covers this entire thing yeah they'll use landscape to actually help soften this up more putting some giant lid on this will make it look ridiculous it'll piss me off is what it'll do Brian will come here now see this is not what if I dodge was named dumping where did you learn this problem don't say here we do have a repo program it's not done properly we're gonna rip it out for you Steve it use plants we think about you use the plant - hi air conditioner if you can't figure out a plant to come over the edge of this then shame on you the pawn fit for this Chris was saying something that I want to catch comes with what best part even his that is the Welcome kit got to Pat Brian on the back or anything but what he's really good about is giving that that new customer that new that new clients this is overwhelming sense of joy and happiness right and it's and it's all through celebrating the lifestyle and getting them to feel all the warm fuzzies about having a new water feature so this kid is the second best thing from having Brian deliver that message is we've kind of put everything into a kit that's the best yep thumb drive nothing says I love you and you love your pond like a thumb drive but what's on it is like so here's what happens is we finish a project and there's no way the customers are going to remember everything we went over how to make a skimmer how to do the dosing system what about leaks how to do the lights the Transformers the I inch end right all these different things that need to happen this goes over everything but what we tell customers every single time is listen I expect you to retain maybe 1% of what I've just told you because they're giddy right they're excited this is something they've dreamt of having forever they're so focused on just the aesthetics and when are they have their first pond party and everything else I say don't worry about it we're gonna set up our appointment two weeks later write down all the questions you might have in that next two weeks and then we'll address it when you're ready to go over that kind of stuff again okay so we got the skimmer run in we already showed us the basket right and you can see how these leaves are now all this debris is slowly coming in here now if you want to maintain this here's a trick you take this door right here close it when I do that the pump stays on and you're gonna see the water level diminishing here now I can take this out and really get an idea of what's going on inside this it exposes that filter mat so now I can come in here without getting my hands frozen in that cold water especially this time of year pull this out below that can you see that rack down there this guy here that's what's important this filter map all they do is I twit Bobby's dead when it's done piss off if I try to untwist it now I'm going to get pretty wet whatever coming here and you can see how easy this is the twist I would just twist this completely off pull this out and then I can get to my pump okay there we go we're about to give birth during their waterfalls I like I just put it every waterfalls unique work of art one-of-a-kind custom creation but the process to make it remains the same [Music] 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