It's........ALLLLIVE!!!

The pond project has made some major breakthroughs in the last week. It's not a thing of beauty yet, but the waterfalls are falling, the stream is streaming and the pump is pumping! I powered on the pump for the first time on Monday. The pond leaked about 250-300 gallons over six hours. Not acceptable, so I shut off the pump for the night and tried again the next day after using a whole can of black expanding foam on the joints. Trial run number two was better, only leaked about 50-100 gallons over six hours, still not good enough. Today I retooled the upper waterfall and went to town with more expanding foam. I'm two hours into trial run number three and have not leaked anything yet!! All in all, the installation was without many problems surprisingly. All my planning, preparation and research made the job go quickly and smoothly(ah, feels good to pat yourself on the back). The job is far from done though. If all the leaks have been fixed then we face the somewhat daunting task of making it purty. We are short on good rocks to line it with but we ought to be able to smuggle enough after a few spring camping trips!

Here's some pics from a few months ago, before all the bad weather hit. These are when I was digging the large pond and building a small retaining wall to level the site a bit to make it suitable for summer campfires...


































Installing the waterfalls and pondliners.....





















Filling the liner......





















And, finally, the (somewhat) finished product.....





















And no job (of mine anyway) would be complete without the obligatory busted knuckle....