Having moved house in October of 2007 to a property that gave us the ability to build what we consider to be the pond we’ve always wanted. Space to be used and budget were pretty much open ended and so we sat down and started planning what we wanted.

The design and positioning of the pond have gone through some pretty major changes along the way, the first one being the location, originally we had wanted to place in on the patch of grass directly behind the house, we measured out a size we felt would fit well in the space and worked out the gallonage, 50k was the result. We then looked at the filtration, knowing that we would be having rather a large pond we knew from the outset that the only way to go would be a set of proper block builts.

We took the plans for this to Richdon koi and spent a good while chatting along the basics and finer details with Richard who pointed out that by putting the filter bay where we had planned would mean having to use far more powerful pumps etc than would be needed if the filter house was closer, upon weighing up the extra costs involved in the more powerful pumps and of course the extra pipework to manage the 30 / 40m returns and bottom drain runs, we decided to move the pond to within the courtyard area of the house.

We felt that this would then allow us to integrate the pond into the section of the garden we used more and also allow us the benefit of having a pre existing section of building already in place in which to build the filters. At this point in time, the plan for 50k gallons was still well on track.

After looking at the dimensions and making a few other decisions about the build and what we (Sally) wanted to use the existing building for, we decided to reduce the pond to about half its original size, it is now planned to be circa 30ft long by 14 wide and some 8ft deep and around 21,000 gallons, with the filters adding around another 5,000 gallons.