Pond in new house.

I'm thinking should I keep the pond of get rid of it. I'm I'n 2 minds at the moment, it hasn't been touched over a year. Can you friendly people help me with a few questions please.

1. Is it hard work to maintain it?
2. Can a pond attract rats/mice?
3. How often do you have to clean it?
4. What happens in the winter?

Any other advice will be helpful.




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Short answers.

1: No.
2: Not really.
3: Once a year.
4: Nothing.

I think that it looks a lovely pond and I wouldn't get rid of it but that choice is up to you.

 

1. No
2. Never seen it happen before
3. Once a year (if you can be bothered!)
4. It freezes

Getting some nicer surrounding stones would be good I think, looks like a rush job at the mo. Making the waterfall more natural looking would be good too, almost as if it merges with the surrounding nature.

 

Any ideas ok how to do that? I'm currently getting the house plastered so its a mess at the moment. Would I need a pump? I think there's one on there but I have to double check as the grass around it, is over grown. Can you u get lights fitted in so you can see it at night like an under water light?


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Ours has a deep part 2m x 1m x 30 inches and a shallow bit 2m x 1m 8 inch depth. The shallow part is a favourite with newts loads of frogs also. The newts are mating and laying and you can be inches away and observe closely. If you have fish you will have fewer wildlife creatures as the fish eat everything including their own young. I have tried both and now fish free much more interesting. All sort of things going on and hatching, small newts from last year and loads of eggs for this year also hundreds of tadpoles. We have plenty of pond weed, small lilies not too invasive with places to shelter. Newts have favourite types of weed.
Do enjoy your pond everyone should have one.

 

I think the pump will be in the pond itself as it pumps the water to the top of the 'waterfall'. You should be able to get lights from any large garden centre or try amazon etc.

Those surrounding pavers really need to go!

 

Thanks nfrost what can I replace them with?


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Ps how do I check if the pump is working?
Sorry if I sound stupid I'm a noob:(


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Ps how do I check if the pump is working?
Sorry if I sound stupid I'm a noob:(


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Finally got around cleaning and everything and realised there is no pump in my pond the owner must've of taken it:( so my question is what is the best one to buy I'm on low budget at the moment, and is it easy to install?


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Hiya Harry.

As I'm not qualified, I can't advise you on how to set up the electrical supply. I can though tell you what I did. I had an armoured cable routed from the house to the shed. This supplies a socket with RCD protection. As my pump is in the shed, it was just a case of wiring it into a switching device. In your case you would have to find a way of getting a safe power supply for your submersible pump. As for which pump, there are loads to choose from, it all depends on what amount of water you want to shift, and if you would like it to have a fountain feature. Maybe something like this ? Just bear in mind that most submersible pumps come with a foam filter attached and will need cleaning on a regular basis to get rid of the muck, especially at the start when it will gather up all the muck that's been sat there for some time.

Cheers...Freddy

 

It looks like the kind of pond hedgehogs drown it, sorry. But easily rectified.

The very first thing I'd do is position some large, decorative stones in the water at at least one point such that anything that falls in can climb out. You might also find, as we did, that passing birds use the safe shallow created by the stones to have a bath.

Next I'd get some plants in there. Elodea to sink to the bottom to oxygenate the water, and various other bits to mop up nutrients, provide 'islands' for creatures, and to look pretty. I'm still at the bottom of the learning curve with ponds so I can't really advise more than that, other than to say that since I did our pond, within a very, very short time frame, we saw an increase in wildlife in our garden, including a most impressive huge dragon fly.

 

Thanks for your reply guys, it's a great help thank you. Freddy, my conservatory is close to the pond so can use that as an electric source for my the pump? do I need to get anything else apart from the pump to get it up and running?


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I noticed freddy, you said you have a pump in your shed? doesn't the pump need to be in your pond? Or are they two types I need to get?


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Could you wire it from your conservatory? Probably, yes. But strictly speaking you should get professional advice. Do you need anything else? Well, speaking from the perspective of a Koi keeper, I would suggest that if you intend to keep fish, then the least you're going to need a 'reasonable' filter, maybe one with a built-in U/V. Some here may suggest going down the 'natural' or 'balanced' route whereby you use plants to keep things on an even keel. As I've never tried it, I can't recommend it, but quite a few seem to get on ok with it. To me, it could be a disaster waiting to happen. Bear in mind, that the pond isn't much more than a toilet if there's no way to remove all the unwanted waste products.

There are two basic pond set-ups.
One is where the pump is in the pond. This will either just circulate the water, or run to a filter (and possibly other hardware) before returning to the pond.
The other system is where gravity is used so that (for instance) water runs into a filter (usually via a bottom drain) and is pumped back to the pond, which is basically the system I have.

In your case, an 'in pond' or submersible pump is all that's required.

Hope this helps

Cheers...Freddy