I haven't done as much with the pond this summer as I would have liked, money is always an issue, but digging is free, so back to digging it is. Craig did 90% of the digging this time around, what a sport! We also got our ridiculously out of control Laurel hedge cut down to a managable size and I cleaned out all of the blackberry bushes behind the barn and we got our deck painted amongst many other outdoor projects this summer.
I realized after starting to dig the trenches under the footing for the bottom drains, that the best thing to do to make the plumbing easier and to actually do them right would be to dig out the entire area behind the pond where the filtration will go. You can see in the picture below, the space where my pond window will be. I still have 3 more courses of block to lay out and the back wall will be 2 courses higher than the rest.
So here it is dug out, except for a little more close to the fence. I will build a retaining wall around the entire inside of the filter pit. You can see the trench I dug out for the footer for the back wall and where I dug out under that for the 4" bottom drain line. There will be another bottom drain on the far side as well, digging these trenches are a killer, I had to pick away little by little to get it dug out, the dirt down this far is very hard and clay-like.
Here it is from another angle. Next I put in my forms for the footer along with more rebar. The area between the two back walls will be for my Sand and Gravel filters that supply the waterfall.
Yesterday we got the cement poured in, now I am ready to set in more rebar and build some more walls. When I get three courses of block laid on this wall, I will stub in the bottom drain line, fill the center in and put cement on the top 6", this will be a plant shelf in the pond, then the back wall will go up another 4-5 courses.
