Installing a ponds (Part 2)
Some things for consideration how your pond will look:
In most modern gardens it will be a good idea to make part of your pond at least 2′ deep. This helps to keep water temperature more or less constant.
A multi-tiered design: these are especially good as different plants sometimes need to be submerged at different levels.
A slanting floor is also good. Many ponds have most of the pond at 2′ deep but part of it might step up to 18″ or so.
Experience showed that it takes about 8-10 hours to dig a 5×10 pond, 2 feet deep. It may also take less time if you have help or particularly appropriate soil.
When the hole for your future pond is ready, you have to install a pad for the liner. You may take advantage of commercial pads (some liners even have one attached) or do it by own strength. Some manufacturers recommend sand but it is rather difficult to get sand to stick to the walls of the pond. You may use newspaper or thinner cloth but a low-nap indoor or outdoor carpet is to tested out. Line the bottom and sides of the hole with the carpet. After you line the sides and bottom, make sure that you clean up any waste that may have fallen from the sides of the pond.
The next step is to layout the pond liner. To do this you will need someone’s help to get the liner into the hole without knocking all of the carpet from the walls of the pond.
Get down into the hole and flatten out the liner as much as possible, then carefully fold it so that it goes around the corners of the pond. You may also try simply to plop the liner into the hole, start filling it and wait for the water to flatten the liner.