Pond Construction -- Concrete

This is a ground up view of the wet concrete from a day's worth
of work laying the new concrete path that will eventually surround the new pond.

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What started as a big hole in the sand last month has finally
taken on the look of the garden koi pond that I envisioned.

One evening last week we installed the rubber liner.  The liner is very thick (.45 mils) resembling and feeling like an old tire inner tube.  This was not an easy job mainly because the liner weight over 200 pounds (91 kg).  Because of all that weight it was not easy to manipulate into the wood frame that I'd built to hold it in place.  We also bought the rubber a little large. . .just in case and that extra rubber was difficult to cut and remove.

We did eventually get it secured and filled the pond with about 2,000 gallons of water.  The structure I built to hold the rubber liner is 8-feet x 16-feet x 2 feet giving the pond a volume of 256 cubic feet.  1 cubic foot = 7.48 gallons thus the pond has an approximate capacity of 1,915 gallons.  If you're curious (I was) . . . a gallon of water weighs about 8.35 pounds making the pond's weight about 15,989 pounds or right at 8 US tons.

These are all the tools I use to lay concrete pathways.  I have an electric concrete mixer, wheel barrow, trowels, shovels, rakes, water, and many sets of gloves.  Concrete mix is very caustic and will severely dry and irritate unprotected skin.   I was a little ambitious on day 1 of the path-laying. . . deciding to use 21- 50# bags of concrete mix for a total dry weight of about 1,050 pounds (1/2 ton), after adding water the concrete's weight rose significantly.  It was blazing hot this weekend when I began work on this, but I decided that its only going to get hotter so I might as well get on with the project.

Because it was so hot and dry I had to make the concrete nearly twice as wet as recommended.  Normally one would mix about 1/2 gallon of water per 50# of concrete mix.  I was using roughly 1 gallon per 50# mix and still having some trouble with it drying too fast.

The hat was a gift from Sis.  It came in handy in the bright, hot sunshine.  One has about 1 hour to form the bricks that will become the pathway before the concrete starts to set up.  I was wetting down the work area with misting sprinklers to keep it from setting up too fast.  It made quite the mess. . . with sand and concrete sticking to everything including me.

At the end of the day I had finished a large section of pathway.  The curving areas are difficult as they are done freehand and I'm never quite happy with the shape of the "stones" that I create.  The straight sections I use a frame that is a repeating pattern of 8 different stone shapes.

For the curious. . . we do not have any stones in Florida.  If we did I would prefer to use natural stone.  We have sand, we have some clay. . . on the coast there is some coquina sedimentary rock. . . but nothing resembling stone is found on the central Florida peninsula.

The new pond will be ringed with pathway when it is complete.  I have to spend a couple of days hauling more concrete mix from store to home.

This was a particularly tricky section, joining up one concrete path to an existing concrete path.  All of these stones had to be formed by hand.  My fingers were getting sore by this point from being wet shoved in two sets of gloves. . . and working with the very heavy concrete.  

Looking to the west.  My tripod sits at the bamboo "wall" that frames the existing pond that we built a few years ago.  This pond too will be framed with bamboo.  My vision for the garden is a tropical forest that is only open where there are the broad concrete pathways.  The overall space I'm working in is about 2 acres.

As the sun was setting a swarm of hungry biting flies and mosquitos were descending upon me.  I thought the heat had been bad. . .but the bugs were worse.

I have two or three more days of work on this pathway to finish it all the way around the new pond.  I'm leaving a foot all around in order to plant some tropical flowers between pathway and pond.

This is a kind of broad view of the backyard space.  The existing pond is hidden in the bamboo on the left of this image.