The crew from Urban Escapes spent the last half of last week shaping the the pond walls and floors. There’s a lot to do here because the original pond was only six feet deep at its deepest point. If we can, we’re going for a full eight feet in middle. This required a lot of dirt and rock removal. As you can see from the pictures, we quickly got into river rock once we got below five feet into the ground. This significantly slowed down progress and will end up costing us a little extra.

Rather than try to dig trenches through all the rock and sand, we decided to use the trackhoe and dig the floor even deeper. This will allow us to lay out and glue up the plumbing on top of the ground, then back fill the floor with good soil we will purchase. Backfilling will allow us to put good structural soil around the pipes and not have to worry about rocks creating pressure points on the pipes. Replacing rocky soil with clean soil is actually a good idea for any project using PVC pipe. The pipe can become brittle and break easily with rocks pressing up against it.

We had a number of setbacks last week, so I did a little work on the pond over the weekend to prepare for tomorrow morning. I grabbed a shovel and rock bar and dug out the main plumbing trench a little more. I also started digging down on the east side of the pond where the trackhoe couldn’t reach. I’m really hoping we’ll be able to get started on plumbing tomorrow!