Peter Butler’s Pool to Pond – Stage 7

The underlay is all in place and ready for the pond liner. This shows the sump tank too.

Pool to Pond Stage 6

We now need to create a barrier between the steel sheeting and the pond liner, a buffer or padding to protect the liner in the pool to pond process.

Pool to Pond Stage 5 – Peter’s Butlers’ Wall.

The new wall is in and all ready for the padding ready for the new pond lining. Another step closer to getting our silver perch.

The Pool to Pond Wall Frame is in… Stage 4.

The pool to pond wall frame is in and the sheeting is about to go on. Aquaponics here we come. I say in this video that iit’s about 10,000 litres but the reality is more around 17,000 litres -- that’s a lot of fish… and vege’s.

A New Wall On the New Pond – Stage 3

The deep end of the pool is finally backfilled so we can form the new wall for the new aquaponics pond to be.

The dimensions will be about 3.5 meters long and the width is about 4.2 metres. Depth is about 1.4 meters at the deeper end and 1.0 metre in the shallow end. I figure it to be about 17,000 litres. You’ll see the begininng of the framework in the video.

The Pool to Pond Adventure moves forward – a bit. Stage 2…

Peter Butler’s Pool to Pond Adventure moves forward to stage 2 in our pool to pond conversion and adventure. See the video here…

Peter Butler’s Bonsai Collection

My collection of mottley bonsai.

Hard Pruning a Banksia Ericafolia

Peter Butler’s Pool to Pond Adventure – Stage 1

We were losing about 12mm of water a day, every day. It was costing us a fortune so being responsible I set about to find out where it was going. I guessed that the light was the suspect and after draining the water to below the light fitting. I was right, it was now only losing 6 mm of water a day… what a pain, oh well, half way there.

We continued to drain to where i suspected the was an issue in te shallow end of the poool. It was all going well until the pool pump wouldn’t pick up the watre because of the height diffence. being the inventive fell aI am I used aan old pond pump and dropped it a little more. It was all good until the drain that was a couple of metres away from the pool blocked up and the water backed up over the pavers around the pool.

Well, you can imagine what happened next, the water filtered through the pavers and the sand on the outside of the pool got heavier until… Bang!

So this is the journey of transforming our money hungry pool into a food producing aquaponics centre

Peter Butler on Bonsai Japanese Maple – Prune and Shape

This is my informal upright forked Japanese Maple about to get a serious reshape.