Lining A Pond

[jaiyenyen]

I have had a pond dug 14m x 10m x 3m on some land we have near Roi-Et, I want to stock it with fish and maintain a constant water level all year round. I've been given a price of 200,000baht to do a concrete liner (a lot more than I wanted to pay).

Does anyone have experiece of a concrete liner in this area, ie Issan?

Are there any alternatives?

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks

Jaiyenyen

[jubby]

Wow , thats a lot of money and I would have thought there's no gaurantee that the concrete wont crack or fracture.

I'm no expert but the ponds I've seen are usually dug down below the water table and therefore don't need a liner.

Get it dug deeper for a fraction of the price or you could try puddling it with Clay.

[tim armstrong]

I have had a pond dug 14m x 10m x 3m on some land we have near Roi-Et, I want to stock it with fish and maintain a constant water level all year round. I've been given a price of 200,000baht to do a concrete liner (a lot more than I wanted to pay).

Does anyone have experiece of a concrete liner in this area, ie Issan?

Are there any alternatives?

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks

Jaiyenyen

We've got a concrete one slightly larger than that -25m X10 X3 that has been in about a year. The soil is a sandy loam that drains quickly, hence the idea of using concrete. The pond has been OK but is showing some signs of cracking in some places towards the top. It cost about 40,000baht to put in. When we built it we asked around about some other types of liner, either underneath or inside the pond. But most of them eg, the black polythene, seem to breakdown very quickly, so we've not used anything other than concrete. Would be interested if you come up with something durable. Tim

[jaiyenyen]

Thanks for your reply Tim,

I recieved another quote yesterday, luckily I was sitting down.....650,000 baht, I've only just stopped laughing.

When I mentioned 'puddling with clay or plastic liners I just got a blank look back.

Tim, when they lined your pond with concrete, did they use re-bar, and how thick was the concrete?

Regards

Jaiyenyen

[jaiyenyen]

I've just e-mailed these people.

Thai Charoen Thong Karntor Co Ltd

www.tctthainet.com

[chownah]

Plastic sheeting breaks down from exposure to sunlight and there is no sunlight under the mud at the bottom of a pond. Try it out....bury a small piece of black plastic in the mud in the bottom of a pond and wait for it to decompose.. Of course if you let some cows walk on it when they come to drink then they will likely break it.

[phibunmike]

Thanks for your reply Tim,

I recieved another quote yesterday, luckily I was sitting down.....650,000 baht, I've only just stopped laughing.

When I mentioned 'puddling with clay or plastic liners I just got a blank look back.

Tim, when they lined your pond with concrete, did they use re-bar, and how thick was the concrete?

Regards

Jaiyenyen

I have a large pond (about 20m x 30m x 2m) which is unlined, and stays full during the wet season. In the dry season it goes down to about 1m. It used to be only 1m deep and would dry out, which is why I had it dug out deeper.

If you use concrete you are likely to get cracking. I believe chicken wire is good as it is fine mesh, but you certainly need re-enforcement of some kind. The ideal is probably fibre that is mixed into the cement mixture, but I don't know where/how to buy that in Thailand.

I imagine that if you use plastic liners on a large pond, sooner or later a root will poke through it.

I have fish in my pond, and the reduced water level during the dry season does not seem to be a problem. Perhaps reconsider your requirement? Look at your neighbour's ponds, see what level the water drops to during the dry season.

Cheers,

Mike

Edit> One draw back is that unlined ponds stay muddy all the time

Edited November 23, 2007 by phibunmike

[thedi]

Concrete will only work if you do it right, i.e. like in a swimming pool: strong reinforced and quite thick. Otherwise it will break and the water will leak out as before. For a concrete solution which will work in a pond of your size, 650K is quite a good price.

Concrete is not recommended for a fish pond. Fish like to dig in the ground and concrete may cause a problem with algae and rotten water. For a fish pond water plants (pak bung, lotus etc) are desirable too.

Plastic foil are much cheaper. Cover the plastic with clay and the sun will not be a problem (but boys with bamboo sticks to fix their nets will be a big problem).

I have 4 ponds. The earth here is mostly clay, hence loss of water through draining away is not a big concern here. But they all loose water in the beginning of the dry season at a rate of about one inch a day. This is mostly due to the wind and sun. Once the water is down about one meter, the wind will not enter the pond so much and the water level will go down rather slow (about 1 cm/day). Non of them gets dry in the dry season.

My ponds where all dug to 3 meter deep. The rain washed in some clay and they are now between 2 and 2.5 meter deep.

I would recommend to dig deeper. But ask your neighbors, if there is problem with salt in deeper ground. This is quite common in Isarn!

The deeper a pond, the cooler the water - hence less loss by evaporation. When you go swimming in a pond in Isarn in the dry season, you can feel it yourself: your feet will feel nice and cool, while your neck is in much warmer water.

Many ponds will leak in the first one or two years. Once the rain washed in enough clay from the surroundings, it will work as a sealing.

So my second suggestion: wait for an other year or two and look what happens. save the money to buy some more land and dig more ponds. Ponds have a tendency to get addictive

Regards

Thedi

[thedi]

Edit> One draw back is that unlined ponds stay muddy all the time

Some fish like to dig in the ground looking for worms, snails and other food. If you have such fish, the water will be like milk, but a light yellow-brown color. Typical problem makers are carp or coy.

To have clean water, you should avoid big fish and have a lot of water plants (lotus, pak bung, reed etc).

Regards

Thedi

[tim armstrong]

Thanks for your reply Tim,

I recieved another quote yesterday, luckily I was sitting down.....650,000 baht, I've only just stopped laughing.

When I mentioned 'puddling with clay or plastic liners I just got a blank look back.

Tim, when they lined your pond with concrete, did they use re-bar, and how thick was the concrete?

Regards

Jaiyenyen

Hi Jaiyenyen,

They did use rebar, and the concrete was quite thick, but I dont know the thickness.

I hope you get some cheaper quotes. Maybe the last one was for the house to put in front of your pond? Good luck with your research. I'm still interested if you find a good inexpensive liner. I have heard that there's a company near Bangkok making rubberized large liners for water storage. But I think they are the commercial dam size type and expensive. Tim

[macan]

You can get good quality HDPE geomembrane, UV stabilized, 1mm thick installed for less than 100 baht per square metre. This is the kind of material they are using in large landfills, shrimp ponds and other containment purposes. Try GSE Linings www.gseworld.com.

[phibunmike]

Edit> One draw back is that unlined ponds stay muddy all the time

Some fish like to dig in the ground looking for worms, snails and other food. If you have such fish, the water will be like milk, but a light yellow-brown color. Typical problem makers are carp or coy.

To have clean water, you should avoid big fish and have a lot of water plants (lotus, pak bung, reed etc).

Regards

Thedi

Thanks for the advice Thedi. I have pla nin and pla tapian (sorry, no idea how to spell those). There used to be dork bua (lotus) but the fish ate it. They love to eat pak bung, which cannot get established in there, but I throw some in from time to time. There is also a thorny plant with small yellow flowers that spreads across the surface too, and which the fish seem unable to eat.

I have recently given up on getting the water clear in the larger pond, as I like the fish for the bbq; for aesthetics, I have built a smaller concrete koi pond which I keep clear with a pump and filter. You said ponds are addictive: I also have another pond for the cat fish, and am now planning a separate pond for dork bua....

Cheers,

Mike

[phibunmike]

... If you have such fish, the water will be like milk, but a light yellow-brown color ...

More like English Breakfast Tea with milk !!

[Loom]

There's a separate thread here discussing soil composition and testing for relatively leak free ponds.

There may be undesireable materials that leach out of cement into pond water.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=133032

[slapout]

The dry sacked mud mix used for drilling oil and deeper water wells can be used to seal a pond to prevent water loss. spread it on the bottom by hand and then fill or wait for rain to fill pond. Salt water in the right porportion will clear up the muddy ponds, it causes the small mud particles which are suspended in the water to drop to the bottom by negating the potential (+/-). We used to dump 200 bbls of produced salt water into stock ponds and they would clear up nicely until you got the next big rain runoff. I do not know the mixture ratio, but the honey wagons they use here to clean out the septic tanks would work good as mixing vessel and should be cheap to hire for a half day project. Some of the chemist may be able to give an idea of amount of salt water required depending on the volume of water in the pond.

[thedi]

Salt water in the right porportion will clear up the muddy ponds, it causes the small mud particles which are suspended in the water to drop to the bottom by negating the potential (+/-).

Gypsum works as well and is probably less critical for the environment (in Isarn many places suffer of too much salt in the earth).

As long as you have fish like carp or pla tapian in the pond, you will never have clear water. They dig into the ground which will always have some clay. You can see them at work, if you watch your pond patiently: from time to time a slightly darker cloud will rise from the deeps to the surface: thats a sign that fish are digging in the ground und mixing up the kii tom (mixture of clay and water), which was about to settle, up again.

Regards

Thedi