Here's the back yard before the digging began. I can't beleive the amount of work that was done to help get this project underway.
Some plants were moved. The gravel and the edging stones in the pathway were shoveled up and placed at the back of the deck, and a lot of other little things that I can't remember at the moment.
The Basic Layout
After getting everything out of the way we laid out the hose to see what shape might look best. I think I tried about a zillion ways before I quit messing around and settled on a shape. I think the one I decided on was pretty-well the first layout I had in mind in the first place. Oh well, it doesn't hurt to keep trying I guess.
This is a shot from the deck just above where the waterfall was built.
Marking The Dig Areas
From all the material I read about building a pond, this was always mentioned as a very important part of the process. All I can tell you is this. While it does give you a general idea of where to dig, it just doesn't turn out the way the paint on the grass shows how it's supposed to.
Lucky for me, the pond turned out to be about 4 ft. larger all around than the original layout had shown.
Starting The Dig
Well, here we go with the digging. This was quite an exciting time for me really because it felt like the point of no return. You know, once you had the equipment here and the lad had already had the machine unloaded from the flatbed truck and had begun to put holes in my nice backyard, there was no turning back.
The one thing that I remembered to do that helped him a great deal was, I went around with a spade and cut the perimeter of the hole. This way, the bucket of the machine didn't tear up the edges of the hole.
Here's the back yard before the digging began. I can't beleive the amount of work that was done to help get this project underway.
After getting everything out of the way we laid out the hose to see what shape might look best. I think I tried about a zillion ways before I quit messing around and settled on a shape. I think the one I decided on was pretty-well the first layout I had in mind in the first place. Oh well, it doesn't hurt to keep trying I guess.
From all the material I read about building a pond, this was always mentioned as a very important part of the process. All I can tell you is this. While it does give you a general idea of where to dig, it just doesn't turn out the way the paint on the grass shows how it's supposed to.
Well, here we go with the digging. This was quite an exciting time for me really because it felt like the point of no return. You know, once you had the equipment here and the lad had already had the machine unloaded from the flatbed truck and had begun to put holes in my nice backyard, there was no turning back.