New here, need ideas for a pond renovation

10 years ago

I've been reading these forums for a little while, have gotten some good ideas. Now it's time for me to jump in and get some more.

Wife & I bought a house this spring that has a preformed hard shell pond, something like the one below from Lowes' website

It's developed a leak on one of the raised shelf areas where we laid some river stones. It probably wasn't well supported on the end. I've seen another thread here where someone suggest relining the entire thing with a sheet of EPDM, which I'm considering.

I'm looking for opinions on whether this would be a good time to cut a hole in the side to add skimmer inlet for an external pump/filter setup. Is it worth doing, or am I just asking for more trouble and work down the line?

Thanks

This post was edited by ianmkane on Mon, Sep 16, 13 at 10:44

Comments (5)

Craigger7
10 years ago
Hi, are you looking to stop the leak or add more filtration. I would think cutting a hole in the pre-mold is just asking for trouble. If you are going to go through the trouble of lining the entire mold with a EPDM liner. Why don't you just take out the pre-mold and make a small liner pond. The hole is already dug, all you need to do is shape the dirt for shelving. The other end on filtration, I personally never used them. There is an item called a floating skimmer in which you can place directly in the pond. Hope this helps..

Craig
Mike56
10 years ago
I think you will find it hard to find anything to stick to the material used for those preforms, so fixing the leak may be a challenge. I would not cut a hole in the side if it for the same reason. Skimmers are meant to be installed with flexible EPDM liners.
I do like skimmers for larger ponds because they do allot of cleaning for you by removing much of the floating and suspended debris that would otherwise sink to the bottom of your pond.
If you intend to keep fish I would reline the pond with EPDM and maybe make it larger at the same time. If not you can try to seal the leak with silicone and a EPDM patch. Clean the surface very well.
Mike
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ianmkane
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks for the replies. The pond is built on a pretty good slope so I figured keeping the shell in place and relining with EPDM would be better than trying to remove and still hold the shape. Are there any drawbacks with draping EPDM over a hard shell?
As for fish, I think we will add fish in the future. I might DIY some sort of in-pond skimmer and bottom sucking filter so that we'll keep it real clean.
sleeplessinftwayne
10 years ago
The big objection would be the water that would collect between the hard shell and the EPDM.
frankielynnsie
10 years ago
I would take out the shell and the shelves--you get more gallons of pond, less wrinkles in you liner and you can make raised areas with plastic milk cartons with a rock on top where ever you need a raised area and this makes a great hiding place for fish.

I have tried to repair the shell liners with patches and silicon that only lasted a little while. This year I repaired a crack in a livestock trough with JB Weld and so far it has worked great. It might work on your plastic pond.