I believe it's called "caliche", and is actually the limestone bottom of the
(former) Salton Sea. It can run several feet thick and is best handled with
a jack-hammer (or drilled and dynamited!). On the bright side, at least it's
limestone and not granite!
Good luck!
Lee
"DesertPond" tapetrade@[No Spam]cox.net wrote in message
...
Thanks Chad, I appreciate the info. I was considering building it's
own little structure. I'd heard about people using rubbermaid
containers and manufactured pump houses as well.
The difficulty I always have with in ground work, which unfortunatly
is this whole project is the kind of 'soil' we have here, Almost pure
rock. The entire area around my pond at 6" or more in depth actually
looks like an old fashioned rock flood wall like in England ( no
joke).
On 3 Jul 2003 05:45:20 -0700, (Chad) wrote:
I built a pump housing in the ground out of 2 X 10's. I lined the
bottom with 2" rock for water to drain. Then put a 2 x 10 cross beam
in the middle to anchor my sequence pump to. Above ground, I built a
cover for the top, but you can pick up fake rock covers that work
quite nicely.
They have them at various places on the internet for around $50 - $75.
You can see one at www.krupps.com under artifical rock.
My setup got its first test this week when my hose faucet ruptured
while I was at work on Tuesday. It happened to be about 15 ft. up
hill from my pump housing. When I got home I had inches of water in
the grass near the faucet, water seeping out of my retaining wall
downhill about 4 ft from my pump, and the pump housing was dry.
I found the hardest part was hiding the 1 1/2 inch flexible PVC. If
you want the hose hid then you need to really sink the pump. I found
a picture that you can see my pump location. It is to the back a
little to the left of the skimmer and you can see the pvc coming out
of the ground a little before going into my new landscaping. To
finish it off I am going to plant some native grasses in front of the
housing.
http://members.cox.net/bokowski/pump_housing_sm.jpg