Pond Build Update

Some updates on this thread. Last weekend after dry stacking the walls halfway up I started back filling the cells with cement. I continued working that morning thinking the rain would let up, after living in Washington for 32 years of my life I should have known better. Later on in the day it did clear up and with my brothers help we were able to finish filling all the blocks. A few days after the cement had cured a bit and I was able to start adding blocks again. Next came digging a hole in the filter pit to sink a 55 gallon plastic drum into for a sump tank to drain my filters and Sieve into. There will be a solids handling sump pump down there to empty the waste water out.

So far my least favorite part of the build has to be cutting the blocks to add the horizontal rebar. Carrying 200 80lb bags of concrete around the house does not even make it to the least favorite jobs list. I would rather just forget about that. Plus there are still 100 bags in my driveway that need to be moved. Back to the block cutting job 6 cuts in every brick time’s 53 bricks per course is a lot of cuts to make even with a nice diamond blade. Now I know why the sell bond beam blocks in the store. This job is loud, dusty and requires a lot of climbing around on the blocks to get the saw into position all this without falling on to the rebar sticking out of the blocks. I did all this cutting while my supervisor sits in the window and eats snacks.

Once the cement cutting is done I have to chisel out between the cuts in the blocks, bend and lay in the rebar and tie all the horizontal and vertical stick together. I’m only doing this to every other course of block so it’s not too bad just time consuming. My wife came down in the pond to help glue in a couple of the 2” flange connectors for the water returns. She has to have the video monitor on her waist incase our daughter/ supervisor wakes up from her nap.

Walls are half way up!

Over the weekend I made it up to the half-way point on the wall, with some heavy lifting help from my brother Saturday. That’s about 265 blocks placed and 560’ of rebar tied and weaved vertically and horizontally through them. Working with the rebar proved to be very hard on work clothes and skin. Numerous rips and tears in clothes, arms and legs. O and then there was a little fire incident Friday night while cutting rebar with a 4” angle grinder. If all the sparks are concentrated in to one area of the clothing it will catch fire. The pictures are all starting to look the same for the most part just more block on the walls and less on the pallets in the middle.

With help from our neighbor Scott and couple strong friends we were able to transport 520 blocks from our driveway to the backyard pond in just a few hours. Only managed to break a few blocks in the process.

I completed the second course of block the other night. Since I’m going with the dry stack method of construction on this pond the second course was glued down with construction adhesive. After sitting for 24 hours I started cutting a channel in the top of the blocks for the first ring of horizontal rebar. Next step will be placing more vertical and horizontal rebar in and tying it all together.

Teo’s 2012 Pond Construction 

The shovel finally hit the dirt Mother’s day weekend for the start of our new pond build. My wife and I have been planning this for some time now after moving into our new home 5 months ago.
The plan is to build up a formal cement block pond with a drop in liner. Inside dimensions of the pond portion will be approximately 11’ by 11’ with a flat bottom depth around 7’ and a centered 4” BD feeding a Cetus Sieve. Included in the plans are 4 TPR’s, 2 mid water pickups along with a modified Waterway wide mouth skimmer to aid in circulation and filtration.
Attached are some pictures of the excavation project. It’s great to have brother who is an experienced heavy equipment operator, this probably felt like a toy in the sand box compared to his day job.

                       


Here is a picture of our nicly ladscaped yard before the project began.







Made some more progress on the pond over the last week was able to get the forms in and rebar installed in them thanks to my dad’s help. This step seemed to be very time consuming but we wanted to get it right. Saturday we bent up a couple 100 feet of rebar that we placed in the middle of them.

 

 

Monday we had 12 pallets worth of materials delivered to our driveway. 550 Cement Blocks, 240 Bags of Concrete mix and 1000’ of rebar. Now it’s just hiking it all to the back yard so we can get the cars in the garage again.

 

 

 

Got 40+ bags of concrete mixed last night and poured in the forms. I added over 75 18” sticks of rebar into the footing hopefully my measurements come out correctly and some of them hit the holes in the blocks. Thinking that rebar was just a cheap soft metal I figured my Sawzall would cut through them like butter. Not the case I should have bought or borrowed a metal chop saw. Probably could have paid for one with the number of blades I went through cutting all those sticks. Overall the project went well with my dad and brothers help.

New Kaylie Video

Playing with Cooper

Shawna, Kaylie and I throwing the ball for Coop in the front yard.  Coop was a little distracted by the neighbor kids out playing.

Coop Jumping for treats

RC Heli Night Flying

This past weekend was great-I was able to combine 2 of my hobbies into one weekend of fun with family and friends.  The photos below were taken between 11pm and Midnight Saturday night.  Two amazing RC heli flyers-Frank, with lighting assistant Troy and Ken from LowerHeli.com.   I took these photos with around a 10- 40sec. exposure with the camera sitting on a picnic table.   The helicopters were outfitted with glow wire and LEDs on the body and special night blades with LEDs embedded in them.

I attached a short video clip of Franks heli flying at night to give you an idea of what they look like. 

Kaylie at Hot Start Heli's Fun Fly

Shawna and I wanted to try some 6 month portrait style pictures of Kaylie.  So with a blanket draped over the TV and a towel on the coffee table we went to work.