Indianapolis IN, Pond Build with a Blue Eco RDF

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:31 pm

The area around the bottom drain furthest from the house was off by upwards of 2". If you look at the picture I posted yesterday there is almost no water around the middle drain and you can see water at the bottom edge of the picture that is around the 3rd bottom drain. The concrete that is right around the 3rd bottom drain was actually the highest spot in this area. There was no way of grinding this down to get it to work so I needed to find a very high strength mortar with excellent adhesion. I did find this product and we installed 600 pounds of it today and got all of the slopes at the middle and 3rd bottom drain correct.

In this picture you see a black line going through it. This line represents the ridge I had to create so that there was slope going to each of the bottom drains. The red lines show the slope as it is now and as it should be. Originally all of the water sloped form the middle bottom drain the an area that was behind the third bottom drain.

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:31 pm

For this product to be successful I also needed to be able to grind it down to feather out the edges where it meets the existing concrete. This mortar product can't be feathered out on it's own but it is very strong. It could be walked on in an hour so, after a couple of hours and before we installed all of the mortar, I decided to see if I could grind it down to make is a smooth transition. It worked, as you can see in this picture so tomorrow morning I will grind down all of the mortar as needed. The new mortar is the tan material.

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:32 pm

Today I spent about 10 hours grinding down the high strength mortar coating on the floor of the pond and putting hydraulic cement in the cuts I made to remove the T-8 tabs and tie wire. The floor of the pond in now very smooth and has good slope to all of the drains. I am happy with the results. The pond is almost ready to be painted.

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:33 pm

I won't be working on the pond tomorrow as I am doing another small project. Sunday we will start working on the pad for the RDF and hooking up the plumbing.

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:34 pm

We got back to work today. I started off by chiseling out a little bit of concrete around all of the plumbing in the pond. I filled this space with marine caulk to seal the pipes, and skimmers, to the concrete. You can see the sheen from the caulk around the pipes in the picture. I also scraped down the hydraulic cement I put in a couple of days ago. Once the pond is swept out it is ready to be painted. The pond paint was ordered weeks ago but was sent back, by FedEx, as they said it was damaged. It wasn't damaged. The shipper said they would send it again, two day express, and it was supposed to be here Friday. It did not come so we will have to keep waiting.

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:34 pm

Poured the pad for the RDF and hooked up the stand pipe for the Leveler autofill.

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:35 pm

The last task of the day was to make my custom bottom drain covers.

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:36 pm

I started on the filtration today. The first step was to set the Blue Eco and make sure it is level and that the water level of the pond is set to the top of the waste tray.

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:36 pm

Once the RDF was in place it was time to start setting the bottom drain and skimmer lines.

Postby **Russell Peters** » December 12th, 2016, 5:37 pm

There are three bottom drain lines and two skimmer lines. The two skimmer lines are joined together into one line but they each have their own valves. The decision was made to put the valves, in the ground with a Christie box, because, once the skimmers are set, they probably will not be adjusted very often.