"Hal" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:30:37 CST, "Reel McKoi"
wrote:

I agree. Get the best system money can buy right at the start and don't
make the mistake of flat bottom ponds like we did.

I dug my liner up after a year in the ground and installed a bottom
drain. In the process I put a taper to the bottom, giving the bottom
about a 1 in 4 feet of drop to the center. That may help a little,
but I can't tell that it helps to keep the bottom clean. Detritus
still settles on the surface, eventually leaves seem to find their way
to the drain, but it isn't like rain off a roof of the same pitch. It
does however make it very exciting to step into the pond and try to
walk around bare footed. The bottom is about 8x11 feet and I can
place one foot on the drain dome and do little things like retrieving
something off the bottom that a net or scoop won't pick up, but the
tapered bottom is just a pita.

The sloped bottom would certainly present a problem with balance. At our
age myself and my husband don't need a bad fall. I took a bad one from the
shelf a few years back and the bruises and pain lasted for weeks.


IMHO A much better solution to a clean bottom is to use a sweeper.
I used a second pump to push water through ABS pipe on three sides of
the pond along the bottom corner, with holes spaced along the side of
the pipe to push water across the bottom and to the drain. I put it
on a timer and ran it for an hour daily. It was beneficial, but lily
pots kept it from being totally effective. Without junk like pots
bottom it should work well. I prefer the lilies to the questionable
benefit of the sweeper with the pots disturbing the sweeping flow.

That sounds like a workable solution to removing your mulm. Since we have
to drain down the pond to remove all the unwanted fry every year we'll
probably continue to do so. Removing the mulm and leaving the fry would
never work.


--
RM....
Frugal ponding since 1995.
rec.ponder since late 1996.
My Pond & Aquarium Pages:
http://tinyurl.com/9do58
Zone 6. Middle TN USA
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