"Gill Passman" gillspamattaylorpassmanspam.co.uk wrote in message
.. .
Hi All,

After lurking on this group for a few months and a lot of research
elsewhere
I am almost ready to finalize the plans for our pond.

We will most likely be using pond liner due to the area to be covered and
the fact that it won't be completely square or rectangular. The structure
will be decking panels. I will probably need to put a grid in short-term
because of my 4 year old daughter. We are planning to keep fish in here -
hubbie wants Koi but this is still up for debate.

The pond is going to be raised around 2-3 foot above ground level. I was
wondering if we need to dig below the surface at all as well? The problem
is
that our soakaway runs around six inches below where the end of the pond
is
going to be. Of course there is the possibility to dig deeper at the other
end of where the pond is planned for.

Any thoughts on this would be helpful - especially on the need to dig and
if
yes how deep?

Thanks
Gill

I gather a soakaway is a sprinkler system?

You should be able to combine all of your ideas to make this work.

1) Dig down a bit where you can.
2) Insulate the above ground part. You could use the dirt from the hole.
3) Cover (insulate) the top in winter. Since you're building this into a
deck, it should be fairly simple.
4) Your heater only needs to keep the water around 39°F. This will keep your
electric bills down. I only needed
a 300W heater to keep my 500 gallon pond heated in the wilds of Canada.
The heater only ran an hour or so a
day.