Pond Bridge Replacement – Part 2

In this second installment of our bridge installation, I will pick up from where I left off in part 1. (While the bridge was out of the way I had reset some rocks that were supposed to line the edge of the pond that had been dislodged by critters over time. The prep work for the footings was complete and the support frame for the bridge was assembled and placed on its footings.)

Now it was time to assemble the rest of the bridge. While the frame was relatively easy to move on and off the footings, the completed bridge would have proved difficult due to its weight, so we put the rest of it together in place. First, we screwed down the planks. We had test fit them to the frame while it was inside so that we could place the first one with the proper overhang to allow for the same overhang on the other end once the last plank was screwed in place. The holes were predrilled at the factory through the planks and all but two screws, as we moved from one end of the bridge to the other, went in easily. One of the predrilled holes lined up with a knot in the frame. After predrilling that spot on the frame, the screw readily went in. However the second screw, that would not go in all of the way, seemed to strike a piece of metal buried in the frame. I was unable to drill this spot to accept a screw so I moved over and tried a new pilot hole. Luckily the problem that I had nearby was not persistent. With the planks in place, it was time to assemble the railings.

First we located the center posts in the center of the bridge. Then we attached the end posts such that the horizontal railings slipped into the inset of the posts and their predrilled holes lined up in the center of the posts. One “little” oops occurred as I got ready to place the last end post. While the bridge frame and planks just fit between large rocks on either side of the bridge, part of the posts sit on the outside of the frame and screw into it. It just happened that this last post was on top of a large piece of sandstone that kept it from sliding past the side of the frame. Luckily we have some large masonry bits and this sandstone boulder was somewhat soft so I was able to make a notch in the boulder, to accommodate the post, using my drill. Once this post was in place, we screwed in the rails.

The kit also included pieces of wood meant to go vertically between the frame and the bottom horizontal rail, evenly spaced along the bridge. As we were test fitting these decorative elements, we decided that they blocked more of the view and made the bridge feel more closed in than we wanted, so we left them off. The only thing remaining was to install the decorative elements at the top of each post.

Our completed bridge is very sturdy. I am glad that I spent the extra time on the prep work for the footings. It also was a great idea to assemble the remainder of the bridge in place once we had the frame placed properly on the footings. This is one heavy and solid bridge. I’m betting it lasts longer than the last one.

Pond Bridge Replacement – Part 1

After over a decade of use and being exposed to the elements, the bridge over the stream leading to my garden pond (see second photo in link) had a structural member give out. Unfortunately the same design was not available. In fact, I was not enamored of most of the designs I found online and the one local place that used to do custom fabrication that I knew about was no longer doing so. Luckily I finally found a couple of styles that had potential at Fifthroom. We opted for the Red Cedar Eden 1/2 Picket Rail Bridge, had it pre-stained and shipped to us. It was going to be a bit wider than the old one but luckily we had just enough room to accommodate it. (This style has three support beams instead of the two of the previous bridge.) As with our previous bridge, it was sent as a kit for us to assemble.

I learned a few things putting in the first bridge that meant my prep time before placing this bridge would take longer but the extra effort should ensure the bridge lasts even longer than its predecessor. While I did plan for footings when placing the first bridge, I did not make sure they were all level with respect to each other, nor did I check for square before we hauled out the assembled bridge. The sides of the stream looked like I should be able to measure off them to place the footings. I had also not realized that there was still a fair amount of slope to the sides in that portion of the stream. That meant that when we placed the first bridge, I had to quickly shift some footings. As I was getting close to finishing this, the bridge shifted some under its own weight to settle onto the adjusted footings. Since it didn’t look like it sheared or torqued too much, we decided to leave it alone instead of taking it off and doing anything more to the footings.

This time I was determined to have the footings in the correct locations, at the correct height to be level with respect to each other and level themselves. I used some large cardboard pieces to fashion a rectangle the size of the footprint of the bridge. I laid this across the stream so that I could place the footings such that they would be under the ends of the three support beams and avoid the larger rocks that we had placed along the stream banks. Once the footings were in place based on the cardboard mock up and we had the framework of the bridge assembled, we test fit the beams and the footings. After making a couple of minor adjustments, we pulled off the bridge framework so that I could level the footings completely.

The footing, as you look at the first photo, at the near left corner was going to be the one that set the height for the rest of them. This is because it was the only one that would be resting on the pond liner. Because it was upstream, I selected the shortest rock footing that I had and placed the tallest one at the near right because that was the lowest elevation where I needed to place a footing. While I worked on a footing to level it, I outlined its placement with some flags so that as I removed dirt to properly set the elevation and level of the top surface, I wouldn’t lose the proper placement. I used a carpenter’s level to check the level of the individual footings and I used and 8 foot metal straight edge and the carpenter’s level to level between footings. Once I had everything looking good, we placed the bridge frame on the footings to check and I’m happy to report that no more adjustments were needed.

(The conclusion to the bridge installation was posted a few weeks later as promised and can be found here.)

Garden Pond Clean Out – Part 2

Day three began with more rock removal from the middle and bottom levels of the pond and rock washing. (If you have landed here without reading part 1 of this garden pond clean out project, you might want to bring yourself up to speed by reading part 1 first.) In addition, as the dirty rocks and silt were removed, the liner cleaned and enough clean rocks returned, we began to restack the bottom two walls of large rocks and replace pebbles on the ledges. Finally by early evening the silt and sediment were declared banished along with the last of the water (see first photo). Now we just needed to replace a stone bridge that serves as a fish hiding place on the lowest level and the pebbles before we could begin to add water, treat it and return the crowded mosquito fish to the pond. Since we had some rocks to clean still, we only filled the bottom level of the pond so that we could add the water lilies and mosquito fish before it got totally dark. I didn’t want the fish to spend another night in their crowded temporary housing. The mosquito fish were so taken by the change back to a larger body of water that they swam in a tight school round and round the edge of the bottom level of the pond for quite some time before splitting up and investigating their new environment individually. It was actually quite amusing to watch them. We also placed a small pump in the water to circulate it since we couldn’t turn the waterfall back on until the pond was full.

The next day meant a return to work or school for my two guys. I spent the week looking for appropriate containers for the upper ledge plants that I wanted to return to the pond. Also, with the help of the other two when they could, we replaced the remaining pebbles as we cleaned them. It was the next weekend before we were able to fill the pond up the rest of the way. I had no luck locating the smaller hollowed out stone planters that my local stone yard used to stock so I made my own rock planters using small slabs of stone from Whiz Q Stone and fixing them in place in the pond using black expanding pond safe foam. Once the new “pots” were made, I replanted the dwarf papyrus and pickerel rush and then treated the water as we refilled the pond. Once filled, it was time to turn on the waterfall, replace the snails and tadpoles (which had grown tremendously in the week they spent in their bucket with the pickerel rush and dwarf papyrus). The next weekend I purchased 5 new goldfish and some pond starter to help re-establish the beneficial microbes in the pond that help break down organic matter and help keep algae from forming.

We did leave the stream section untouched during this project, hoping that the good bacteria from that section would help repopulate the pond. It is the last piece of the water feature installation that has not been cleaned since it was installed. Since we had to leave the waterfall off for a week, this was not as successful as I believe it would have been if we could have turned it back on before it dried out most of the way. However, the water for about 6 feet downstream from this untouched section did clear up and stay clearer than the rest of the pond, so it seemed to help some. When the weather warms up enough in the spring, I will begin to add more beneficial microbes to help combat the string algae that has moved in with the cooler weather. (We will mechanically remove much of it too.)

All ponds will silt up and require some maintenance over time. This siltation can be minimized by avoiding certain plants that tend to create large root masses, such as water clover and horsetail (dwarf or not). I still have a bit of edge work maintenance left to do around the pond and I expect that we will clean the stream section this coming summer. After that we should be able to enjoy our water feature without major maintenance for many years to come.

Garden Pond Clean Out

After almost a year of concentrated work on clearing out the plants that I will never recommend that anyone plant in their garden pond, ever, we had most of them pulled out of the pond. (See my previous blog post so that you can learn from my mistake.) In addition, the water lilies that had been growing for about nine years needed thinning so over this past Labor Day three day weekend and finally finishing the following weekend, the three of us tackled a major pond clean out and restoration project.

With most of the water clover and dwarf horsetail removed we could tell that either the 19 degree low of last winter, the plant overcrowding, some combination thereof or the fishing skills of the herons or raccoons finally did away with all of our goldfish. We still had several hundred mosquito fish that would need to be removed in order to drain and clean out the pond. We also anticipated a good deal of silt build up after nine years and lots of root mats created by the plants that I will never plant again. There had been a lot of silt that we had to remove from the waterfall “bucket” when we did the leak repair on the spillway about two years ago and the pond is hundreds of times larger than that, so this was no small undertaking.

Day one entailed removing the remaining “evil” plants as well as the water lilies and some other plants that I wanted to keep. We had many more water lilies than I would need to replant and a friend with a large natural pond that wanted them, so we meticulously cleaned the water lily tubers and roots so no stray “evil” plants would make the trip to his pond. These were stored in large buckets filled with the pond water and I had a bucket for my plant keepers as well as snails and a host of tadpoles that had just hatched.

Day two started with filling another large bucket with pond water and beginning the great mosquito fish harvest. We also began draining the pond with our pond vacuum and removing rocks so that they could be cleaned and silt could be removed from the liner. I had really wanted to be able to put the mosquito fish back in the pond by the end of the day so we continued to work by shop light on the first level of pebbles before we called it quits on day two. By then we had a bucket full of hundreds of mosquito fish, many of the rocks removed, cleaned and some replaced but lots of works still ahead as can be seen in the second photo taken before work started on day three.

You will find part two of the clean out saga by clicking here. (Images enlarge when clicked.)

Waterfall Leak – Part 2 – The Repair

In order to repair our broken waterfall seal, we had some more disassembling to do. We took off a few layers of rocks directly below the spillway. This gave us access to the screws, or I should say what was left of them, that held the pond liner in place. The liner was sandwiched between the waterfall container and the molded, heavy black plastic spillway piece. Most of the screws, as well as about half of the metal sleeves that they screwed into, had corroded over the years. Once we managed to free all of the pieces, we were able to tell that the root came from the tree at the base of the berm and not the rosemary at the top of the berm as I had initially surmised.

We clipped the root and had to remove the bags of lava rock from the waterfall container to get it all out. This prompted some needed maintenance, as much sludge had accumulated in the container over the years. We hosed off the three mesh bags full of lava rocks and the three large fiber filters at the bottom of the container. That wasn’t the end of the sludge however. Luckily we have a wonderful Oase pond vacuum that we used to remove the rest of it along with hundreds of empty pond snail shells.

In order to remove as much tree root as possible, so that this problem didn’t come right back, we moved the three large boulders to the right of the waterfall and the small rocks that rested on them. I dug back as far as I dared in the clay of the berm and clipped the offending root. Now we were finished disassembling and could begin the process of reassembling. I started by compacting the clay back into the hole in the berm that I had created when removing the tree root.

Other than the lava rock bags being heavy, putting the filter system back together in the waterfall was easy. Next we had to figure out how to put everything back together at the spillway to create a good watertight seal. My husband found stainless steel bolts that would screw into the remaining sleeves or fasten with a nut in the holes where the sleeves had disintegrated. Just the compression provided by these screws would not have been enough however. After one false start to create a watertight seal we got the help we needed from Whiz Q Stone, a local stone yard and pond and landscape supply.

From Whiz Q Stone, I bought the seam tape, seam cover tape and primer from Aquascape Designs that I needed to create a watertight seal between the plastic waterfall pieces and the heavy EPDM pond liner. The primer causes the surfaces that you put it on to meld into each other to create a watertight seal. It worked like a charm. If you take on a project like this, make sure you read the label and take appropriate precautions when using these products.

Next, the rocks had to be put back. They never go back exactly like they were before. Part of this is because heavy puzzle pieces are difficult to manipulate and also because there is more than one solution to the puzzle. I filled large voids with black waterfall foam that is available even at your local hardware store.

Almost done now, I just needed to add some water and water conditioner before turning on the pump. Everything worked perfectly and better yet, after several hours there were no wet spots in the garden or bubbles under the liner.

Garden Pond and Waterfall Leak

One day my husband came in and asked if we had had much rain earlier that day. It turns out that when he pulled a couple of weeds near our garden pond and waterfall, he found the ground to be rather wet. We had not had any appreciable rain and as we investigated further, it turned out that there was some standing water in another area of the garden and “bubbles” under the pond liner in the stream section. I had seen these bubbles before, only much worse, shortly after we had had the pond installed. At that time they were caused by an uneven settling of the waterfall filter container that allowed water to pour over a back corner and get under the liner.

We decided to turn the pump (waterfall) off overnight. In the morning there was no standing water and no bubbles. We turned the pump back on in the morning and within a few hours the bubbles and standing water were back. Now we knew that when the waterfall was off, there was no leak. The hunt was on for the source.

Water was flowing properly from the waterfall container and not over a back corner as it had previously. As we traced the wet soil, it continued up the berm towards the waterfall. Finally it looked like the only way to trace the source further was to turn off the pump again and disassemble the waterfall. When we lifted off the fake spillway rock, we found the culprit. A root of a nearby tree had worked its way between the pond liner and the waterfall filter container, breaking the seal and allowing water to seep under the liner.

Now all we had to do was fix the broken seal and we should be back in business. This was easier said than done however. I’ll explain the process in my next installment.