[music]
Hey I'm Eric Triplett The Pond Digger,
today I gonna introduce you to a couple who hired a professional to build a pond for
them
and it turned out to be a classic case of Ponds Gone Wrong,
let's go check out the pond meet the couple and hear their story
here's our problem pond I'm gonna point out to you all the mistakes that were
made in the construction process
so that way you have a better understanding of how a pond should be
built,
so you don't have the same problem happen to you.
Okay here's our skimmer and you know
if this was installed correctly you would need this AstroTurf to
try and hide it, it's completely out of level
it's not skimming properly in its hard to maintain cause it's on the back side of the pond.
So this is going to put on the right side of the pond and this is just,
this is terrible this was done by professional or so-called professional
over here we have a waterfall filter it's not even creating oxygen as it
spills into the pond
Part of this hole problem is everything done together, the skimmer is not installed
correctly,
so all this debris is not getting pulled into the skimmer the waterfalls is not
splashing into the pond and creating oxygen
and then you wouldn't have this type of algae if you had good oxygen into the pond.
Now, this thing should be elevated and it's completely out of level, I mean it's out
of level, it's only
18 inches wide and its out of level about 4 inches,
so this is just done really poorly. We don't want our liner exposed to the
Sun.
On this particular pond if you would set a rock right here is just gonna splash
into the pond, you should be able set the stone here
but look it just want's to fall, there's no way to set it up
even if I could get these stones to line up and hide the liner
if you want to step around the pond do something it just wants to fall right in.
So there's no structure of shelves in that pond so
we're gonna correct that, that bothers me quite a bit
because if this is exposed to the Sun after time it's gonna start
to become brittle and then you gonna have a problem with your liner, your pond is gonna be
leaking.
This pipe right here, should be completely covered
I mean
the Sun's gonna make this brittle, within about 4 years this is gonna
crack wide open
you walk up here to work on your skimmer, and this is gonna blow out, I shouldn't be able
to see any of this
so we're gonna hide that as well. The pond is
to shallow and that's why this fences is around the pond. I don't like it when you put a
fence around the pond, you can't come up close, you can interact with the fish
this fence was put up because the ponds to shallow
the predators are coming in and getting the fish, the home owner's all upset
because they lose their favorite fish Lil,
and so we're gonna make the pond deeper, get rid of this fence
so you can make it to where you can come right up next to the pond.
This is expanding waterfall foam and
this is how the liner was hidden, I mean if you stepped on this, look at this wants to
fall into the pond
oops, now we have a fold now the ponds leaking because it was done so poorly
so this is all gonna have to be corrected, a pond should blend seamlessly into the
landscape
this one's definitely not doing that, so we gonna have to correct all this, this is all
gonna get ripped out.
So the installer
didn't hide this liner very well, so here's another attempt by the homeowner
to trying to disguise the liner
its just not doing a very good job. If the installation is done well
then this liner is not going to be showing. The homeowner tells me that
the pond had a bad leak,
the installer had to come back a few times
and this was one of the attempts to fix this side,
looks like they put some kind of a, lets discover what's under here.
All they got is just a little bit of plastic under here,
a little flimsy plastic to create an edge for this liner.
But once again there's no shelf on the interior to help hide that
now you wanna put a coping stone on the inside of the pond like this
but the stone can stay stacked right there, so the proper shelf wasn't created
right here
to put coping to hide the liner we're gonna have to correct that as well.
I really have mixed emotions about this pond because
I deal with homeowners that build their own ponds and sometimes they'll make a
mistake,
but that's okay we can help them through it, my real problem is
this was professionally installed by a guy who said he does ponds all the time
and this is the product that he delivered, it's simply unacceptable.
The homeowner actually paid to have this done, my teams is gonna come in here
we're gonna demo the whole thing, nothing is salvageable to us
we're gonna installing new pond, and we're gonna show you how its done right
the first time
[music]
Hi I'm Vicki, I'm Bob and this is Arthur
and we have a Ponds Gone Wrong in our backyard and that's putting it very
mildly.
I was going through the Yellow Pages looking up pond people that do ponds
and I found one and I'm an appointment with them and then my gardener, I was
showing him that I was going to have that done and he said: We do that.
I went online because they said hey go ahead and pick out some equipment that
you like
So I went online and ordered a special brand and had it shipped in
and gave it to them and they took over. It took them a month and a half to build
the pond.
They weren't quite sure what they were doing and they confessed to me that they hadn't
done ponds previous before, but we've gotten so deep into it, I said well
do you think you can do it or should I call someone, they said no we think we can do
it.
After they were done I started noticing that there was lots of mud clumps
coming around, this is before I put the fish in, and I waited cause they said that it
needed to establish itself that's why I was seeing clumps of mud, it was trying to
stabilize and then they came out
and discovered that one of the walls with caving in.
Then I was ready for fish. I put them in
there's 6 of them and I just mentioned Lil briefly, that was my favorite but
going on with the fish
suddenly about, ooh three weeks later after that
I came out and discovered that 5 of my fish were missing.
I didn't know if a predator possibly have gotten them and
at that time I thought a predator did. I called the gardeners out, then they
built the fence around it
said that it could have been predators. I came out about 4 days later, I heard the
pond, the pump making mmh, mmh, sounds I couldn't describe
and the fountain part wasn't
bubbling over where the frog was, and so I just
outta curiosity climbed over the fence, lifted it up and there was 5 of
my fish belly up. [Laugh] after looking at the pond and the fish I didn't
think they were long for this world so I didn't get
attached, I knew better. I don't know where to go to, you don't know anyone.
You don't know one that's had a pond put in because my other one my son did,
an 8th grader,
and it came out great. He built that first one that was nice, the water was clear and everything
work properly
and the fish never died, It never turned out looking like that one did,
that one looked like a Hazmat spill to me.
[background noise]
[Background noise]
I got the crew all lined out, I let them be to work their own magic
I'm gonna go check on a couple other projects I got on the books and tomorrow
we should be finished if we don't run into any surprises, once it's completed
we'll come back we'll see the reaction from the homeowners, and we'll show the
changes that we've made to the new pond.
[music]