Leaking Pond

Eyeballs

I have a pond at the end of the garden that's been leaking for over a year now. I've put patches on the liner countless times where I thought the leak was. I got fed up patching it up and tore out the liner and mixed sand and cement to put a coating on the pond. I mixed in waterproof-er/ plasticiser with it and its still leaking. is there anything I can do now to stop it leaking?

ponddigger

hi eb,how big is the pond,post some photos of the pond:Dponddigger:D

sponge_bob

first off sand and cement is not waterproof, and adding "waterproofer" to it dosn't make it any more waterproof (a mistake made by many people).
sand and cement is prone to cracking when it is settling in and when the weight of water is added.
concrete on the other hand can be made waterproof by troweling a fine finish on it and ensuring their is no "honeycomb" showing, a good thickness would be required 3-4" depending on how much water you intend to put in the pool. but if it cracks it will leak, nothing you can do about it.

imo pond liner is most likely the best thing for a pond, it is easy to shape, it is 100% waterproof, it is quick to put in, and is most likely the most cost effective option. but in saying that i have never used it.

i would suspect that when you were laying the pool liner a stone sneaked in under the liner or poked it way up from the ground and it went un-noticed.

now that you have the sand and cement pool put in you could line that with pond liner. or maybe you could paint the inside of it with a couple of coats of tar if you are reluctant to go down the pond liner route again.

kylith

sponge_bob wrote: »

now that you have the sand and cement pool put in you could line that with pond liner. or maybe you could paint the inside of it with a couple of coats of tar if you are reluctant to go down the pond liner route again.

I don't know about the tar idea. My dad put some kind of tar down to waterproof a pond, and from then until the day he took it out there'd be big oil globs of tar leaking up and floating on the water. Nasty stuff.

Discodog

Unless you can find an obvious leak then the only solution is to start again. Cutting corners when pond building is never worth it as they always come back to bite you.

I have built numerous ponds & water features, some commercially. I always follow the same procedure:

Dig the hole with sloping sites & lots of planting troughs.
Line it with a minimum of 2 inches of soft sand.
Then line with commercial pondliner protective fleece.
Finally finish with a high quality, heavy duty liner so that none of the liner is visible.

I have some that I built 20 years ago that are still fine & leak free.

sponge_bob

kylith wrote: »

I don't know about the tar idea. My dad put some kind of tar down to waterproof a pond, and from then until the day he took it out there'd be big oil globs of tar leaking up and floating on the water. Nasty stuff.

hmmm good point:o

Discodog

I know someone who paid a contractor thousands to build a pond. It turned out like a giant concrete saucer - totally unnatural. But after a period of heavy rain the saucer started to float !. He literally had a pond with fish, weed etc that was floating as the groundwater came up underneath it :eek:

Oh one professional trick. Put a sunken tank with a float valve next to the pond so that the level automatically remains constant - makes the pond look so much better.

ponddigger

hi dg.could you explain more about the auto fill tank :Dponddigger:D

Discodog

All you do is bury a plastic dustbin next to the pond. Then put a piece of hose with a filter on it (old food storage box full of foam) into the pond so that it siphons water into the bin. Then put an ordinary toilet cistern float (ball) valve in the dustbin & connecting to the water supply. By adjusting the float you can set it up so that as the level in the pond drops so does the level in the bin. This then turns on the float valve filling the bin & the water flows back along the syphon pipe into the pond. Because of the syphon the level in the bin & the pond will always be the same.

ponddigger

hi dg ,thanks for the imfo.what do you thing of the american system of building ponds and waterfalls:Dponddigger:D

Discodog

ponddigger wrote: »

hi dg ,thanks for the imfo.what do you thing of the american system of building ponds and waterfalls:Dponddigger:D

No idea what the American system is

paddy147

Eyeballs wrote: »

is there anything I can do now to stop it leaking?

Yep there is.......

Dig it back up and do it propperly instead.

It might sound like alot of heartache,but its best to do it propperly and have piece of mind too.:)

ponddigger

hi dg. they use skimmer box and waterfall box,see photos:Dponddigger:D

ponddigger

hi dg ,photos of finished little pond using skimmer box and waterfall box:Dponddigger:D

Discodog

I have not used Skimmer boxes & I can see a lot of disadvantages. You would have to have a constant water level. The surface current would not be conducive for Lilies, surface feeding fish or pond skaters etc.

I like my ponds to be as natural as possible. I put a submersible in the deepest water under a waterfall so that the current is localised & then feed the output through UV & then a three stage biofilter hidden in the waterfall.

I will try to find some pics of the last 26 foot pond that I did.

SpudBr

I have this pond , 3 Cubic metres . But it is leaking for the past year at least .I am trying to get somebody to fix it by getting rid of the liner and changing it , but this is impossible - I have contacted about 6 contractors who have said that they will contacct me in usually 8 weeks , but that is too long to wait . I have tried to fix it myself and it has not been successful . Anybody out there interested , who has done this before . It has about 20+ goldfish .
Thanks