Stage 22 – Final plumbing tweaking

Final plumbing tweaking and the water flow before the final top up.

The Water is in and we’re almost ready for fish and plants – Stage 21

The water is in and we’re almost ready for the fish and plants.

The mechanics of setting the levels using a lazer level – Stage 17

The mechanics of setting the levels using a lazer level showing the height pegs in each corner

In Stage 16 we’re ready to do the lazer level bit so it all sits level

The water bed frame is constructed and ‘in situ’. I’m ready to use the lazer level to set all the heights and levels in our water bed and pool to pond.

The second liner layer is in and bonded to the pool. The pool has had it’s second coat of sealer.

The Water Bed Frame and “We’ve Sprung a Leak” – Damn- Stage 15

The water bed frame is in and we’ve had to put in a second layer of the pool liner becasue we sprung a leak, damn…

Stage 9 and We Have Water in the Pool to Pond

We finally have some water (a bit) in the pool to pond conversion.The solid wall is in, so is the sump tank and access pit. We’ve given the pond wall a coating with the pond sealer too.

We still have about 10 m3 of sand to come in with the help of the Bob Cat (thank God) and a bit of work to go but it’s really taking shape now.

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 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