Hello,
I need advice please.Have spent two weeks moving our old pond which was about 1 foot deep to a new location.We dug it ourselves,and made this one 3 feet. We finally finshed Friday evening.Went out for the day yesterday,came home to two sides that had collapsed in.We can not figure out why this happened.Can anyone help.What do we need to do? What did we do wrong?
Thank You.
Deb
It's probably a factor of what kind of soil that you have and maybe rain or water table levels. Is your soil loose or compact? Clay or sandy? Sandy soil may collapse. If it's rained a lot, that helps collapses. If the water table is high, it can also collapse. Was the soil wet or just loose? You may have to make the pond bigger to include the collapsed areas since the soil is no longer compact there. Did you dig straight sides or sloped sides? Sloped edges are less likely to collapse. When we built my 153 gallon pond, it was mostly done with no liner when a hurricane came through. It filled the entire pond which I had to bail down and managed to do soon enough that it didn't really collapse but we have clay soil which tends to hold its shape. If it's just a factor of your soil type, the good news is that once you can get a liner in there and add water, the water pressure will keep the ground from collapsing further for the most part. If there's a problem with a high water table, that would require more work to create drainage and such. I'm guessing you just had loose soil that couldn't hold its shape. If you have enough liner, it's easier to just remove the collapsed dirt and work from there instead of trying to make it go back which wouldn't really work. If you really had to, you could make a cinder block wall under the ground for the support of the liner and backfill with dirt. I hope you can salvage your new pond!
Deb, Robyn has allot of good questions and suggestions. What I'm unclear about, was the pond filled with water or was it empty when the sides collapsed? If your soil has weak composition, like sand, try sloping the sides a bit, it'll also help if you're rocking the pond.
Here's a picture of how I held my straight sides in place.
Rocking Pond