Is it as simple as waiting for the frogspawn to hatch, piercing the liner & letting it drain, fill with hardcore, tamp & pave over?

I’ve been told its complicated – why?

We’re in the process of similar, so far done the drain and fill with hardcore part, and the world’s not stopped turning yet… we did pump out though rather than let it soak away, though ours was about 7000 litres 😕

Why?

Two small kids…. That’s why

You could just tell them to stay away from the pond.

Grating over the pond? They’ll love a pond with frogs and stuff in a couple of years.

Sh1t best fill my 2 ponds in and the next door neighbors as I have 2 kids……….
Wait they’ve grown up and moved out…….
Oh hang on ones just come back from Cham and the next door kid is home from uni.

Is the pond large enough to put a boat on?

Might make a nice man-cave.

As daft as it sounds I’ve often wondered what the regulations are if you put a boat on a private pond and use the boat as living accommodation…can you bypass planning controls?

We have one small child one medium pond and a relatively cheap but strong mesh pond cover . We get to keep an attractive wild life pond and crankbrat gets to stay safe.

Two small kids…. That’s why

Just to provide a historical example.

Folks had a pond before my eldest brother was born, and still had one by the time I moved out.

No one drowned.

When they filled the last pond in, we pumped the water out, filled it with rubble/hardcore then top soil. Why would it be complicated?

Won’t somebody think of the frogs? Where are they going to spawn next year, when they return to your garden.
Frog killer!

Ffs I spent my youth in the back fields looking for newts & fish in ponds, unsupervised! Even played in the dodgy as **** raft & still managed to make it to 41. Take sensible precautions, don’t wrap them in bubble wrap

Don’t worry about the frogs, it’s the newts that cause problems 😉

Teach kids about hazards, don’t remove the hazards. kids need to learn and ponds are ace for kids

As daft as it sounds I’ve often wondered what the regulations are if you put a boat on a private pond and use the boat as living accommodation…can you bypass planning controls?

How big is this pond?

Alternatively, you could achieve the same by parking a caravan in the back yard.

The pond is 4ft by 3ft. Not much chance of me living in it on a boat.

My son couldn’t get within 20 metres of a pond without falling in.

I remember we stayed at a campsite in the Lakes once, within two hours of arriving on the first day, pretty much every item he had with him was soaked in pond water. Now we have a house with a pond I fully expect him to fall in it. I can’t wait till my young nephews come round to stay so I can fill their wellies with frogspawn.

That’s an experience that every young man should go through.

just done it myself, sick of it being green all year round, pump and filter always seeming to pack up so went for it. decanted the water to the field at back of garden, pierced lining, filled in hole from the rockery that probably started off in the hole anyway 🙂

tramped it down roughly, just stuck a load of grass seed on it and hoping for the best now.

btw, dont feel you have to justify it to anyone, its as good a reason to get rid as any.

Why dont you get say a large self erecting tent to put over it till….
Oh wait a minute. 🙂

Lol! I don’t feel the need to justify it – the decision is made. KJ01 has been in it already.

The decision might be harder if for the fact it was in the middle of a patio so had hard concrete edges all around – and therefore my worry is that one of the kids will knock themselves out on the way in.

just put some of that mesh they sell for making rabbit runs out of over it – the marginal plants grow through it fairly quickly and hide most of it.

My daughter loves our pond – always going down to check on the tadpoles at the moment.

Also bear in mind that frogs and toads ‘home’ (http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/10373364.___Clueless____pond_work_led_to_deaths_of_toads_in_Brighton_park/) so they’ll keep returning to the pond even if it’s not there any more and will die without access to water. Just saying.

fill it in? don’t you mean dig it deeper and wider and turn it into your own skate bowl?

It’s amazing that me, my brother and sister made it to adulthood, seeing as we also lived in houses with a pond.

The pond is 4ft by 3ft.

Then mother in law should fit in nicely without too much chopping!

I am in the same boat (pun kinda intended)…

When we moved house, the bloke there said he was gonna clear out the fish but didn’t get round to it. We said it was fine and would deal with it.
What a ballache! Clearing the weed out, keeping the plants in check, unclogging the filter…..etc.
We managed to get rid of the ‘big’ fish last year and have just got rid of the rest of them. I didn’t wanna just chuck them in the river, so managed to find people who actually wanted them & knew what they were doing….
The pond is on two levels – one sunken and one raised; brickwork surround with lining.

We also had the arrival of some amorous frogs and associated frogspawn but looking at it yesterday, it all seems to have died. We were gonna wait until the frogs had all grown up & flown the nest, but probably not necessary now. So, next step will be to pump out rest of the water; might put some of it over garden (apparently the plants love it) and the rest we’ll put down the drain. Then a case of knock it all down, remove liner, fill with knocked down bricks, stick some sharp sand on (I think) & then lay paving slabs.
It cuts right into the patio & must be 3×1.5m in total size. It’s also right outside the door onto the garden, so will make a big difference.

Once that’s done, there’s a patch of paving slabs down the left hand side of the garden (about 6×10′) I’m gonna lift & lay turf on, so increase the green bits…will probably use these slabs to temporarily cover the pond with, until we can afford to re-do the whole lot properly.

At the rate I’m going on house improvements, I should have it done in time for Summer 2020.

When me and brother were young our parents had a pond we loved it, always playing down there got filled in ‘cos it was always leaking I really missed it.

When I bought my house a few years back first thing I did was build a pond.
I have a 1year old daughter now and can’t wait till she can appreciate it and all the wildlife it brings to the garden…she’s just starting to point out the fish now 😀 which are becoming more active as it gets warmer.

Just a thought, do you like rice ?

http://i1176.photobucket.com/albums/x323/crankboy1965/IMAG14962_zps49bc61cc.jpg

When we bought out house, there was a pond that was going to be too big for us to cover cheaply, and we didn’t really like the look of it or want the ballache of keeping it maintained. It also had a pump that was powered via some very dodgy garden electrics that we really didn’t want to keep live..

We just connected a garden hose to the pump and used that to pump out the water further down the garden to drain away*, then cut out the liner and filled with rubble from elsewhere in the garden. We chucked bark chips on top and a big trampoline.

There’s plenty of other areas in our garden for wildlife and frogs, and the pond wasn’t particularly wildlife-friendly anyway.

*finding three quite large gold fish flapping around in the last three inches of water was a bit of a shock. Luckily, there was a smaller pond we could throw them into.

Well I’d offer you the Mrs but she’s been alright recently.

You are a couple of weeks late for Maggie… How about Abu Qatada or Luis Suarez ?

I’d take Qatada, he’s a big lad… he’d fill that hole right up.

Just for balance I drowned in a pond when I was a kid

Kryton – sounds like ours was the same as yours, a decent sized pond in the middle of a flagged area. We drained it, filled it in and got someone to pave it over to match the existing area. There is a small header pond that fed it from the top that we kept though, currently bursting with frog spawn 🙂

We decided the larger pond as it was was an unacceptable risk, especially as our kids could trip over their own shadows!

Mike – snap, we bought the house with the pond and upon draining it found quite a few good sized fish. They went in the local canal 😳

Mike – snap, we bought the house with the pond and upon draining it found quite a few good sized fish. They went in the local canal

When the first guy came to get the ‘big’ fish we had, he netted two fish that I had never seen. One was very slim, but quite deep and had large silver scales – it was really shiny and about 12″ long. God knows how we missed it. The second was a common carp about 18″ long!
He is a friend of my other half’s and has a 20000 litre Koi pond. He took about 8 fish in total including 3 Koi.

A few weeks ago we got rid of the remaining ‘small’ fish – about 12 in all I think. One of those was a green tench that was about 12″ long. Again, we’d never seen it!
Been in the house for 2yrs and 2 months now and peered into that pond plenty of times. Even been in it once to clean it out! Pretty sure it’s empty now, although won’t be suprised if we find a few more ‘lurkers’….

I have three ponds in my house (well 4 but one is tiny) which all feed into each other.

I don’t have kids but my niece and nephew are obsessed by it, as its full of all kinds of life (including two ducks at the moment). So even if I do have kids I won’t fill it in; as to tell the truth the pond was on one of the pro’s when I bought the house.

My brother on the other hand everytime he see’s it thinks it should be filled in because of the risk of kids drowning, then again he’s also obsessed with peados being *everywhere*

On another tact anyone know how to get rid of blanket weed, I’ve tried barley straw and some hoselock ant blanket weed treatment and it keeps coming back! Would a pump moving water between pools help?

Ponds are nice, 🙂
Just think next year you could be camped next to this Kryton

Just to provide a historical example.

Folks had a pond before my eldest brother was born, and still had one by the time I moved out.

No one drowned.

1982, no one died
1983, no one died
.
.
.
.
1988, someone died
1989, no one died

😆

Would a pump moving water between pools help

Yes, and my parents used to try to hook most of it out, dry it and whack it in the compost bin.

I never drowned in my parents pond, they’re great, although they did fill the horrible huge 70s square concrete ‘ornamental’ pond and replace it with a more ‘natural’ looking one.

Also, newts are awesome.

Back up there on page 1,

don’t wrap them in bubble wrap

but if you did, and they fell in then they’d just float on top, no danger. 😀

Ponds are ace – full of stuff to look at and ponder at the wonders of nature when they are a bit older. Make the weekend project building a mesh cover for it instead.

That said our pond has just become the receptacle for our neighbour’s (but one) cracked sewage pipe. It erupts in the flowerbed and trickles a few yards down the garden and is filling up the pond beautifully. Truly a thing to behold at the minute. The “wonders of nature” have buggered off somewhere else that smells better!