I’ve had a few folks ask me about how I set up the pond in my backyard recently, so here’s my way of killing two birds with one stone.

I’ll give a brief rundown and knock out a blog post at the same time. My interest in having a pond predates my complete obsession with photography, so I don’t exactly have a step by step shots of the construction. I also got tired of looking for shots in my archives, but I think I

First, dig a hole– no, wait. First, please read as much as you can find about caring for a pond. I didn’t do that and over the years my pond has suffered major apocalyptic ecological disasters (on a backyard scale).

Still, the first thing I did was dig a hole. I sketched it out and knew a little bit about how the sides needed to be shaped and the additional material that I would need.

I layered sand in the bottom of the hole and covered the sand with plastic and old carpet remnants in the deep end. The carpet protects the liner. I’d read that somewhere, it made sense and I happened to have some crappy old carpet.

I sandwiched a layer of plastic to further protect the liner and also to help with any leaks.  Sorry, I don’t remember the exact thickness and material of the actual liner, but I bought it off a roll from Home Depot.

If you want to be a purist about this, then find a pond store or other “supplier”.  So far things are holding up well.

I lined the edge of the pond with two rows of bricks, an inner row and an outer row placed under the liner.

A row of paving stones placed flat along the top hides the edge of the liner and hold the row of bricks in place.

It’s getting late, so BOOM.  There you have it.

Over the years I’ve added quite a bit to the yard, but the basic structure of the pond has remained the same.

Different pump and filter combinations have been tried, but until recently, I haven’t been really happy with the set-up.

Every three years or so, I’ve had to drain the pond and start over.  Stringy algae blooms have been the biggest problem.

Once it starts, it’s pretty much all out war and I don’t always win.

This year, I bought a new pump.  I’ve used the same UV filter for several years and it seems to do a good job keeping the water clear.

Doesn’t do crap for stringy algae blooms.  For that I use a water treatment (chemicals) and barley straw. 

In the past, even if I killed the stringy algae, the dead algae would pollute the pond and clog the filter system.

I bought a big honking filter to solve that problem.  So far, that’s done the most to keep the water clear.

Right now, the fish are happy and the pond seems to be holding up pretty well.  With regular maintenance (cleaning the filter) and a little luck it’ll stay balanced and we’ll be able to enjoy it without having to start from scratch every couple of years.