Eeek.

We bought a house in the summer. Three ponds, very nice.

Only now the heavens have opened, the deluge is biblical and the ponds are getting very close to full.

Last night I ladled out 40 buckets of water. This morning the ponds were full again. I’ve just repeated the ladling job and I suppose as long as God gets bored before I do all will be well.

But there surely has to be a better way?

And how do I reseal the fibreglass liner back against the bricks? In another couple of inches water will start to spill down behind the liner. No idea about ponds (obv.) but this surely has to be a Bad Thing?

Help!

Get a hosepipe (or 3). Set them siphoning with the sucky end at the level you’d like it at (not at the bottom or they’ll be empty in the morning).

Humble pond-brag 😀

I suspect that the water overflowing the liner will soak away into the ground, as it would have done if someone hadn’t prevented it with a sheet of fibreglass.

It’s not a humble-brag, honest. But it would be if I also mentioned that I get tired walking from the living room to the kitchen 😛

Never had a pond before so the idea that heavy rain might result in an overflow simply hadn’t occurred to me. I vaguely assumed that there would be some sort of automatic self-levelling mechanism 😳

I just let ours overflow, the surrounding ground just acts as a soak away.

The fish don’t try and escape.

You need thirsty fish.

Shouldn’t be a problem unless water is trapped under the fibreglass liner and then the pond empties enough to allow the water pressure underneath to push the liner up. Big lined ponds can use a positive pressure trap at the bottom to let ground water push back up into the pond to get round the problem. I really wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

I did consider the What-The-Hell method. But 9,000 litres of water poised precariously just 8ft from my rear window (no pun intended) was making me twitch.

You’ve got to keep bailing them out i’m afraid.

Just because I’m amused by the idea of you out there in the rain with a bucket 😀

You need a fourth pond for them to overflow into.

is your rear window above or below the pond?

spw3 checking up on the gardener earlier today.

About 3 feet below the top of the ponds. And about 3 inches above the patio 😯

Do you have any tents you can put up over them until next May?

What do you do with all the soil you’ve excavated though?

Fill one of the others 🙄

Sounds like a perfect situation for a hydro-electric power plant. UberSTW.

If you’ve got three ponds I imagine you can simply hire a pond rescue man and claim the expenses back from the House of Commons. Or Lords, whichever you’re in.

What do you do with all the soil you’ve excavated though?

then later

What do you do with the soil? Call this a mountain bike forum…

Do you live at Fukoshima?

one long-term solution is to design an overflow into a bog garden.

Unless all of the ground slpoes to the pond then you are only collecting the water that falls directly on to the surface of the water. Once the pond are full the the pond will not get more that a couple of mm higher as the area the water can collect in massively increases. Assuming that the rain is so heavy that you are not getting any infiltration then the rest of the garden will start to fill as well. All you need to do is look at where the water flows to naturally and ensure that this is the best way for it to go so as not to flood you.

You need to think what has happened previously. We have not had that much rain compared to previous events (not even close) so I would suggest that you actually watch what happens when it fills up in a storm and see where the water goes. I would have to assume that the previous owners just let it do its own thing and did not get flooded every time it filled. Gravity is your friend here so as long as you don’t block off any drainage routes then you should be ok.

Do you have a river or other suitable drain near? If so then install an overflow weir and dig a stream to suitable drain and the water level will look after itself.

Fill a load of buckets of water an put them in your loft to use when we have a dry spell

Also, if you have lots of large fish, remove them as they’ll be displacing a significant volume of water

After last Boxing Day’s fun and games with flooding I bought one of these: https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/hippo-2-1in-submersible-water-pump/?da=1&TC=GS-051010190&gclid=CLWk3tORvNACFUFmGwodf7UM-w

Fortunately haven’t had the need to use it yet but it’s there for emergencies!