Life In A Time Warp!

Okay, look, I know - and I'm feeling guilty about it, alright?! I haven't posted in forever, I missed doing my Christmas and New Year post altogether and it's suddenly the end of January and I don't know how I got here so quickly...so the only answer is that  there's a problem with my space-time continuum again and I'm stuck in a time warp that is distorting everything and making October actually just yesterday for me!!!

So, guilt gone and I've accepted I am now really in January - it must be true because I know it's been raining forever and I'm heartily sick of it. It's a wonder Britain doesn't sink with the weight of all that water on our sodden land!

I'm going to use my useful time warp and transport us back to the hazy, crazy but not so lazy days of last summer to show you the work on the bottom pond...at last! :-D
Ooops, I've just realised from looking at the dates on the photos that building the reservoir actually happened in April 2012, but we didn't get any further then because the awful weather set in for the rest of the summer and it was never dry enough for long enough to get the pond finished!

Right. Get yourselves a nice cup of tea, or whatever takes your fancy, and sit back and enjoy the ride!

Given that Himself is a reincarnated Victorian engineer, it wouldn't have been right if  we'd built a reservoir without him having to produce some wonderful contraption to help it along.
He made 2 cruciform wheels of spokes.....

 to go in place once he'd cleared out,shaped, sized,  levelled and put sand in the bottom of the long dug out reservoir pit. He then made a cylinder of 2 layers of hardboard - the inner one was shiny side out, the outer one was shiny side in and was 2" bigger in diameter - the reasons for this will become clear in a minute!

 The two cruciforms wedged the inner cylinder in place and kept it circular. The outer cylinder, being bigger, left a 2" gap for concrete to be poured in and we used offcuts of tea house insulation  to wedge the out cylinder in place. I'm a really good mixer of concrete (she said, modestly!)

 Once the concrete was set, we took it all apart, raised the cylinders and cruciforms up and repeated the process twice more - with a week between each move to let the concrete harden off. It was hard work and Himself proved to be a bit of a contortionist as he clambered inelegantly in and out of the hole with increasing amounts of stuff in it!

 The result? A beautifully cast concrete reservoir! Himself is a star!

 Now you're probably wondering why we needed a reservoir? Well even if you weren't wondering, I'm still going to tell you. The top pond is considerably larger than the bottom pond. It holds appoximately 6000 litres (or 1300 gallons if you prefer) and the bottom pond only holds about 2000 litres (500 gallons), so every time we switched on the pump to run the stream, the bottom pond water level went down about 2 feet - because the water level  in the top pond needed to rise by a couple of inches in order to get over the lip of the waterfall stone - but more about that later!

In the next photo, the green hosepipe shows the shape of the finished pond. It had only been, up to this point, a hole with a liner in it so that we could get the water levels right and check that the stream worked. It had never been properly dug out, shaped, shelved and 'done'. Part of the problem in getting it done was that I wanted the pond to extend across the skanky old path, part of which I'd already removed, hence the manky flagstones......

 and it was at the top of some equally skanky old steps!!! Yeah, yeah, I know ...first I build ponds under treees, then I put them at the top of steps!
We pumped the water out of the pond hole to let us access the hole.

 Anyway Himself , as ever, had a cunning plan to deal with my idiocy! He took out the old steps, used a few chunky pieces of pond stones to construct a dry stone wall to join up with the hideous old wall on the right (which at some point will be replaced with a nice wall!) and then he backfilled it with the topsoil we'd had lying in a heap from when we originally dug out the pond hole about 5 years ago!

I then had the dubious pleasure of clearing several years worth of leaves, gunge, frogs, newts and assorted other squirmy things out of the  bottom of the hole. Balancing somewhat precariously on the edge of a hole where the bottom was juuuust deeper than I could safely reach did wonders for my core muscles - ouch!

 Then liner was then removed and Himself went all technical again. I pointed out where I wanted the shelves to be. He then carefully worked out all the levels and did the scary bit of drilling the hole through the concrete to put the outlet pipe in place. No use having a reservoir if you can't get water in or out of it!

 The outlet pipe was fitted - after a bit of a struggle in a confined space again, but at least there were no cruciforms in there this time!

 and backfilled with soil, then a layer of  builders sand on top.

 The tank was lined with fleecy pond underlay

 and then, with Ower Dave's help, a specially made 'top hat' shaped butyl liner was carefully put into place and glued down.

 The rest of the pond was properly dug to size and levels. Ower Dave lined it all with fine sand - that I had spent hours making from the sandstone I'd dug out of the pond holes years ago and stashed up the garden on some tarpaulin. It just needed a bit of bashing and putting through a griddle.

 We filled the reservoir, checking carefully for any leaks - and, of course, there weren't any!

 The fleece liner  was put in place and swept clean of any small stones and grit

 before the butyl liner was finally laid...after sitting in the shed for 2 years!

 Himself cut the hole in the liner for the outlet pipe and fastened the outlet seal in place

  and we left it to fill up with water

 ...and it stayed that way for a whole year!

To be continued........!
Oh, and Happy New Year everyone!

Disaster!

Apologies for not being around peoples' blogs much these past few weeks - life got a little bit hectic and something had to give!

Anyway, back to my disaster...........!

Last July I was merrily pootling my way up the garden to pick some fruit and veg for tea a couple of weeks after the purlin ring had been put onto the tea house roof when I became aware of a strange buzzing noise working its way into my happy little world. Wandering up past the bottom pond in search of the source of the noise, I became aware that something was amiss;

The bottom pond was empty!!!!

The buzzing was the pump pumping fresh air. Whaaah!

This discovery resulted in a brief outburst of a chorus of the Yorkshire swearing song interspersed with wails of "where's all the water gone?" as I danced up and down in panic! This was NOT a happy dance, I can tell you!

(For those who don't know it, the chorus goes "bugger, bugger, pig, sod, sh*t, sod, damn"!)

I searched around, but to no avail - I just couldn't find where the water had gone. The top pond was still full, nowhere seemed boggy or soggy ...... it had well and truly vanished! I went in search of Himself, Master of Mysteries, to see if he could shed any light onto things!

Himself, having a pessimistic outlook on life (- although he claims it's realistic) immediately decided that there must be a leak in the big top pond. I pointed out that as he hadn't dropped anything sharp into the pond ....had he?, that couldn't be the reason. (nice speedy deflection of potential blame there I thought!).

I don't normally leave the stream running during the week when I'm not around, but I'd forgotten to turn it off the previous Sunday and it had been running constantly for 5 days - so I had no idea how long the pond had been empty. Himself then added in a very satisfactory worry about whether or not the pump would be wrecked from running without water flowing through it. I reckoned that, as it's a German pump, it'd be fine!

We both spent a restless night trying to figure out what had happened. Himself was holding firm on his belief that we'd have to strip out the top pond to find a leak (see - told you he was a pessimist!), but I was convinced that there was another cause - ever the optimist and trying desperately to avoid emptying the top pond of its 5000 litres of water!

The following morning showed that the top pond water level hadn't changed : QED, no leak in there (phew!). Then I remembered Ower Dave!

When Ower Dave had come to help, I'd shouted at him for walking up the stream bed - something along the lines of "gerrof me stream yer gret daft wombat!" (Translation = "please come out of my stream you silly person!"). He'd claimed that dry stream beds were just paths by another name ... too much walking up Kinder Scout Downfall and Grindsbrook together when we were younger had obviously left its mark!

All of the top pond and most of the stream has solid support under the edges of the butyl lining. The only bit that hasn't is ......... the bit of the stream where the beach is! That's just got a thin aluminium strip under it to give it some rigidity.

I reckoned that Ower Dave had marched his great clod-hopping boots right over the stones and pushed down the liner and either bent it (hopefully) or ripped it on a sharp edge (please no!). So I shifted all the stones on his possible short-cut and, after a few minutes of serious breath-holding, found that he had indeed squashed the edge, but hadn't ripped the butyl - thankfully!

The lowered edge was then below the water level of the stream and meant that the constantly running water had been able to leach its way through the stones into the moss and soil and soak invisibly away - until there wasn't enough water left to create a flow.

Much relieved by my discovery, I then cleaned out the bottom pond. Yes, I know that technically it's still just a big hole with liner in it but in my imagination it's a finished pond!!!

This summer......! :)

Anyway, I spent considerable time removing water snails, frogs and other small aquatic beasties from the pond before cleaning all the gunk out of the bottom. Very smelly and not the pleasantest of tasks - and not aided by this frog who came back FOUR times after I'd carefully deposited him in the top pond - daft creature!

I gave up and kept him in this tub where I could keep an eye on him!

I then faced up to fixing the stream bed instead of procrastinating! I dug out the soil to give me a clear area to work, unfolded the butyl, rebuilt the edging using stones instead of the aluminium strip, refolded the butyl liner down over the stones then replaced the soil, holding the new edging securely in place. I set the stream running to check that I'd not missed any tiny tears - which I hadn't, and to prove to Himself that the pump was fine - which it was! German you know. Dead good!

Once I was happy with that, I started to replace the beach - putting in some bigger stones to support the edging should some plonk with big feet decided to walk up it again!

I left the stream running constantly for a couple of days to see if the levels dropped - which they didn't, before I put the finishing touches to the stream, adding the stones and pebbles to hide the liner and spill over onto the moss .......... you'd never know I'd been messing about with it would you?!

Stream running beautifully - even if the bit below the bridge still isn't finished!

Then Autumn came and all my hard work was covered up..........

What idiot wanted to build ponds under a load of trees eh?!

The pond and island yesterday -and, yes, the moss really is that green! A combination of all that snow and lots of rain has been very good for it this winter!

And a perfect way to end the day!