Page 19 - Koi Net - On-Line Koi Magazine - Issue 12

OUT WITH THE

Two bottom drains were fitted, the
walls were built in blockwork with OLD AND IN WITH
facing bricks which supported a
THE NEW POND
wooden pergola.

Stephen Barnsley explains how he
planned and built his new pond.

My garden is narrow and restricted
the width of the pond to 2 metres
but I could make it 8 metres long.

My original pond was built using railway sleepers
with a butyl box-welded liner. It had a capacity of
2,000 gallons, and was fitted with an infinity window. I
took water from a 4-inch bottom drain to a sieve to the
biological filtration and returned it to the pond. It
worked well and kept my Koi healthy.
After building my original pond, I had learned a lot more
My original pond was built about the Koi hobby which drove me to start thinking
using railway sleepers with about how my aspiration pond would look like in the
a butyl box-welded liner.
future – thinking 10 years ahead once the kids were
older. Unexpectedly, days before Christmas 2017 I lost
my job. Although the aspiration pond was years away,
now there was no income. At this point my hobby was
the back stop, and although I loved the collection of
fish I had bought and grown over the years, I decided
to sell my fish to fund getting me started as a
self-employed handyman. As I expected, the Koi I had
in the pond sold quickly. Then decision time came – do
I close down the whole pond, or wait to see what
happens with my new business venture.
After much deliberation, the decision came that filling in
the pond hole (and knowing me, wanting to build again
in the near future) that the costs were too great – that’s
when I got in contact with Keith at Koi Water Barn and
made a deal to buy some small Sakai Kohaku, which I
then put in my existing empty pond to grow on.
I cleared the whole site so I My new business, SCB Services, started to take off,
could build the pond and showing as a true handyman, it went from painting, to
complete the new garden bathrooms, to fencing, to garden patios. At this point,
layout at the same time.
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