Reviving an old thread, cause I'm killing time waiting for the mortar to go off.
We've had a pond in the garden beside the deck for about 15 years. Its been patched and repaired a few times in its life, but the trees around it had finally caused some cracks that needed some more extensive repairs
sorry, didn't think to take any before pictures).
Since we weren't camping this xmas, I decided to spend a few days and finally fix it properly. When I first built it, it was just done with a morter mix about 30mm thick and painted with a pond sealer. The base is fine other than a few cracks, so I've used wire bird mesh as the reo and put another morter mix about 50mm thick all over. Once the mortar has gone off, next week I'll seal it with a couple of coats of Cromolin concrete sealer, before adding 2 coats of Cromolin pond seal. Hopefully that should add another 15 years to its life.
Each pond is around 3m x 2m, and they both hold around 3000l each. The 2 ponds are linked by 2 small waterfalls and a short creek thing in the middle. There's a bricked garden bed on the inside of the top pond for some aquatic plants, and I plan to replace the water lilies that were submerged in terracotta pots in each pond. Mozzi lavea and toal eggs are controlled by having gold fish in each pond. The surrounding garden bed will get a good tidy up, and I've put down a mortar base to pave a sitting area along the front edge.
Work in progress, and should keep me out of mischief for a couple of weekends.
