Construction

The construction of the Pnod began in 2002 with the planning stage. When I first bought my flat, I noticed that in the front yard, there was a large, raised, paved area - ideal for a pond! I've enjoyed keeping fish for several years so it seemed logical, if possible, to turn what was a very boring set of concrete slabs into an attractive water feature. The picture to the right above shows what was under the paving slabs. It seemed to be just an 8" layer of hard-core over a nice easily-dug clay. That was to turn out to be completely misleading, as I shall reveal later.

I sat down and drew up some plans, stored them on the computer and then pretty much forgot about them for a while. However, the idea kept rearing its head on occasion and a friend had given me a price to dig out the hole, so it did still get mentioned from time to time. The breakthrough came in 2005, three years after the original plans were drawn up, when I bought a liner! This may not sound much but it committed cash to the project and thus there was no going back. So, the aforementioned friend was finally commissioned to come round and begin digging (in the event he brought another friend to assist).

I was somewhat wary of having friends working for me, but my fears soon proved unfounded when the builders, whom I shall from hereon in refer to as Greenie and Rosie, or the two Steves, came around one Saturday morning in May and began to remove the hard-core. Over the space of two weekends the basic construction was completed. I said earlier that the clay under the hard-core was misleading and Greenie will attest to that. It turned out that the clay was full of shillet (Plym Valley slate) and although it is only of medium hardness, it was packed solid. It took him a pickaxe and a lot of sweat to dig the hole deep enough! After that the old paving slabs were cut and re-used, both to shore the pond walls and to go around as edging stones. The liner was given some extra protection by taking the precaution of placing an underliner in the hole first, then the edging stones were placed on the outer edges of the liner, once it was in place and full of water. A large surplus margin of liner was left in place all around, so that there was available slack for any settling which took place.